Rising Concerns Over USPS Changes as the Presidential Election Approaches

More people are intended to vote-by-mail due to the pandemic, but now face concerns because of delays and changes at the UnitedStates Postal Service.

There are further concerns that President Donald Trump has had a hand in purposely having mail delayed. Some believe he wants to affect the 2020 General Election in an attempt to suppress Democratic votes, along with having a hand in getting blue mail collection boxes removed in some states.

House democrats have asked the FBI to investigate Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and the USPS board.

DeJoy appeared before the Senate and testified. DeJoy is said to have caused a crisis as cuts and operational changes have been made that disturbs operations and is concerning postal workers and customers.

There is an argument that DeJoy is changing mail procedures illegally ahead of the election by not following proper procedures under law.

DeJoy may have been making these changes to decrease expenses, though several bills have been introduced to assist the postal service.

An emergency assistance act was introduced to give USPS $25 million to assist in covering lost revenue or operational expenses from the pandemic.

This bill is meant to greatly help the post office, ensuring their ability to continue to run as they have before COVID-19.

Trump has mentioned blocking this bill.

Another act introduced will likely bevoted on soon. The Delivering for America Act will keep USPS from making changes to operations that were in place January 1, 2020.

"The postal service is a pillar of our democracy,” wrote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a letter to her Democratic colleagues. She is cutting their recess short to vote on the act.

This comes after multiple attempts from Trump to potentially delay the election and discredit mail-in voting.

The President has continued to push the idea that mail-in voting is fraudulent or abusive and will increase the rates of voter fraud.

“It will also lead to the end of our great Republican party,” Trump tweeted a few months ago about mail-in voting. “We can never let this tragedy befall our nation."

Voter fraud is not as common or as large scale as one would think with the comments made by the President. A report completed by the Brennan Center for Justice found that voter fraud occurred in rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. Most incidents are “actually traceable to other sources, such as clerical errors or bad data matching practices,”according to the center.

Comments such as these from Trump are leading people to have concerns that these changes were intentional to effect the postal service’s ability to have mail-in ballots delivered on time.

“We see the devastating effects of the president’s campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the postal service to disenfranchise voters,” Pelosi wrote. Lives, livelihoods and the life of our American Democracy are under threat from the President.”

The postmaster general released a statement suspending initiatives after at least 20 states, led by Washington, sue over potential delays and impression that there may be issues with election mail.

“I came to the Postal Service to make changes to secure the success of this organization and its long-term sustainability,” wrote DeJoy in a statement.

Some blue mail collection boxes have already been removed in some states. Mail processing machines have been removed in Kansas City. Some of these machines have also been removed in Springfield and Wichita.

The initiatives suspended include change in retail hours at post offices, mail processing equipment and blue mail collection boxes removal, closures of processing facilities and overtime approval for staff.

*Published in the Call newspaper August 21, 2020 issue*