Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. But America’s founders never reckoned with the possibility of a president deliberately trying to wreck the Post Office.
With COVID-19 still raging across America (188,000 dead and counting), many states are expanding voting by mail. It’s a great idea for a multitude of reasons: it lets voters avoid the risk of contagion from crowded polling places; it takes away time pressure for people who have to work on Election Day; it means voters who live in poor or rural districts won’t have to travel or stand in line for hours, avoiding the shameful dysfunction of our underfunded electoral system. It makes participation in the franchise much easier and more convenient.
But, of course, making it easy to vote isn’t what Republicans want. From property qualifications to poll taxes to literacy tests to voter ID laws to felon disenfranchisement, American conservatives have always wanted to make voting as difficult, limited and onerous as possible. It’s a telling glimpse into the GOP’s mindset: they know Republicans lose when more people vote. Their political strategy is to suppress the popular will so that they can govern by minority rule indefinitely.
Universal vote-by-mail is a conservative nightmare, because it lets people bypass most of the hurdles put in their path. And it appears Donald Trump has decided that his only chance to stop it is to hamstring the postal service.
Another of Trump’s cronies, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, has been busy removing high-speed mail sorting machines and forbidding postal employees from working overtime. No adequate reason has been given for these changes, but the real reason is obvious: they want to cripple the Post Office so that people can’t vote by mail in November.
That’s not conjecture, either. It’s something Trump has said out loud:
Congressional Democrats, backed by Biden, have sought $3.6 billion to help equip states for an expected surge of mail-in votes, as well as $25 billion to shore up the Postal Service. Trump opposes it.
“Now they need that money in order to have the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots. Now, in the meantime, they aren’t getting there. By the way, those are just two items,” Trump said on Fox Business Network. “But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped to have it.”
And even more blatantly:
The president made the comments as he dismissed a Democratic-led push for reforms such as vote-by-mail, same-day registration and early voting as states seek to safely run elections amid the Covid-19 pandemic…
“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends. (source)
Trump’s sabotage fits right in with longstanding Republican strategy. The Post Office was already struggling because of asinine conservative policies. Many of its woes stem from the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, a law passed in 2006 by a lame-duck Congress and signed by George W. Bush, which required the USPS to pre-fund its retiree pensions and health benefits for the next 50 years (!). No other federal agency or private business is held to this near-impossible standard.
As Congressman Bill Pascrell writes in The Week:
The measure has been a fiendish straitjacket, akin to making a prospective homeowner cover an entire thirty-year mortgage before the ink is dry on the deed. The provision is even more onerous given that the government requires the treasury to invest all postal workers’ retiree money in government bonds, guaranteeing miniscule returns. Unsurprisingly, the post has defaulted on all of its pre-funding payments since 2011, to the tune of at least $40 billion.
It’s true that mail volume is dropping as more advertising and communication shifts to the internet, which has worsened the Post Office’s situation. But without the ludicrous pre-funding requirement, it would have been profitable as recently as 2018. The crisis it’s facing is entirely manufactured. Republicans have followed a time-honored playbook: they make it impossible for the government to do its job, then complain that the government can’t do its job and should be cut down or privatized.
Also, the only reason this is seen as a problem at all is because the Post Office is tasked with being self-funding, in a way that no other government agency is. This makes no sense. The mail isn’t an inessential luxury; it’s a public service, no different from highways or electricity. There are sound reasons for ensuring that postal service reaches every American, regardless of the cost.
People don’t just use the mail to send letters to loved ones or to get their Amazon packages. They rely on it for bill payments, tax returns, prescription medicines, passports, census forms, and yes, ballots. The Post Office delivers as much mail every sixteen days as UPS and FedEx deliver in an entire year – combined. It delivers to far-flung rural communities that private carriers won’t service because it wouldn’t be profitable for them. And it does it all for a low, flat rate, regardless of whether you’re sending a letter to the next town over or to the opposite coast.
Unfortunately, Trump and DeJoy’s sabotage seems to be having the desired effect. The Post Office recently warned 46 states that it can’t guarantee mail-in ballots will arrive in time to be counted.
Some states are turning to alternatives, like ballot drop boxes – an excellent idea. In other states, activists are filing lawsuits asking courts to extend the deadlines by which ballots must be received in order to be counted. And it’s good to see Democrats are making this a campaign issue and not letting it slide. The Post Office is the most popular and beloved government agency, enjoying an approval rating over 90 percent, so there’s reason to believe that these attacks will resonate.
Still, with the election coming up in just a few short weeks, it’s an open question whether these measures are too little or too late. It’s not hyperbole to say that Trump doesn’t think he can win this election and is planning to steal it by disenfranchising voters. And there’s no guarantee that he won’t succeed.