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The U.S. Postal Service warns that it can not guarantee that all ballots by mail for the November 3 election will arrive on time to count, even if votes are sent by state officials. This increases the possibility that millions of voters could be disenfranchised.
It is the latest chaotic and confusing development involving the agency, which has found itself in the middle of a debate over high-profile election strikes over who is voting in America, and how. These questions are particularly potentially in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, which has led many Americans to consider voting by mail instead of going to personal polling stations.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends e-mail messages as a way to vote without exposing the virus to the interviewers. But President Donald Trump has unequivocally ruled out mail ballots as fraudulent, fearing that an increase could cost him the election. Democrats have been more likely than Republicans to vote by mail in primary polls held so far this year.
Some questions and answers about what’s going on with the post office and the upcoming elections:
WHAT IS FOR THE POST OFFICE?
The Post Office has been losing money for years, although lawyers note that it is a government service rather than a company with profit maximization.
In June, Louis DeJoy, a Republican donor and executive logistics company, took over as the new postmaster general and Trump gave him the task of making the Postal Service more profitable. Doing so would also hurt companies like Amazon. The general manager, Jeff Bezos, has come under criticism from Trump because of the coverage the president has received from The Washington Post, which owns Bezos.
DeJoy cuts overtime, late delivery trips and other expenses that ensure mail arrives at its destination on time. The result has been a nationwide delay in email.
The Postal Service is hoping for a $ 10 billion infusion from Congress to continue operations, but talks between Democrats and Republicans over a broad pandemic relief package that could have broken that money.
On Thursday, Trump honestly acknowledged that he was starving the postal service of that money to make it harder to process an expected rise of post-in votes. Trump on Saturday sought to recalibrate his position. He said he supports more funding for the postal service, but refuses to capitulate to other parts of the Democrats’ relief package – including funding for coups with money.
Why does this matter in an election year?
Emails have exploded in popularity since the pandemic spread in mid-March, at the height of the primary season. Some states have seen the demand for postal voting increase five or more during the primaries. Election officials support the possibility that half of all voters – or even more – will go to the polls in November.
Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and the state of Washington have universal postal voting, and California, Nevada and Vermont will begin universal postal voting in November. But the rest do not have much experience with such volume ballots cast via the post.
Early mail is the key to voting by mail. In states without universal postal voting, postal voting requests are generally mailed to voters. They are, in turn, returned by post. Then the actual votes are sent by mail to voters, and returned again, by mail, normally by election day.
Last month, Thomas J. Marshall, the attorney general and executive vice president of the post office, sent states a letter warning that many of their deadlines were too tight to meet in this new world of slower mail.
Pennsylvania, for example, allows voters to request an e-mail election by Oct. 27. Marshall warned that voters there on that date should already post completed ballots in the email to ensure they vote by Nov. 3.
This has been a potential problem since the Obama administration, when the post office relaxed standards for when mail should arrive. But it is especially acute when the volume of e-mail votes is expected to explode in states like Pennsylvania, which only approved an extension of postal voting late last year. It is also acute when the president has publicly said he wants to restrict votes by his rivals by keeping them from voting by post.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
It is unclear. The first question is whether there will be a billonavirus relief certificate that the post office can fund. Republicans and Democrats are far apart on the measure and Congress has gone home a few weeks.
Chamber member Nancy Pelosi is calling the chamber back in session this week to address the Postal Service.
A vote is expected on Saturday on legislation, the ‘Delivering for America Act’, which would ban all changes in mail delivery or services by 2020. Congress is on summer recess and was not expected to return until September. The Senate stays away.
If there is no resolution of coronavirus aid, the matter will certainly come up during negotiations in September to continue funding the federal government. The government will shut down if Trump does not sign a subsidy bill by Sept. 30.
States can also act to change their postal voting deadlines. That’s what Pennsylvania did last week, with the state asking a court to move the deadline for receiving e-mail elections to three days after the Nov. 3 vote, provided the votes in the mail were posted before polls were close on election day.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and some other Democratic lawmakers are also seeking a review of DeJoy’s policy changes. In response to the letter, spokesman Agapi Doulaveris of the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General said the agency “is doing a body of work to address the concerns.” They refused to expand.
