For all the concern about Russian interference in the election and the reliability of voting machines, a yooge threat to election integrity this fall is one of the men running for president. He distrusts mail-in ballots, at least when they are mailed by non-Republicans. Sabotaging voting by mail during its soaring popularity in the coronavirus pandemic does not require Donald Trump to accept help from Russia.
Vice News’ Aaron Gordon reports:
Post offices around the country are slashing their hours—including during the busiest times of day—with little notice as yet another abrupt cost-saving measure, according to interviews with union officials conducted by Motherboard and various local news reports. The USPS had also planned to close some offices entirely with just three weeks’ notice, likely in violation of federal law, but appears to be backtracking.
The sudden changes come as part of a slate of policies instituted by the new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor with a history of anti-union practices at his private logistics firm New Breed Logistics, that are ostensibly about fiscal responsibility but have contributed to mail being delayed across the country and have postal workers concerned they’re no longer being allowed to do their jobs. Many postal employees also believe the changes will only make the post office’s financial situation worse.
Trump tweeted this local news report on mail delays, one might conclude, to depress voting by mail:
But the mail slowdown Trump is promoting he himself helped create with his choice of postmaster general:
On Tuesday, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia sent a letter to DeJoy regarding the “imminent closure or significant reduction in hours and services” as post offices “in my state and across the nation.” Manchin’s letter noted that “this would likely be a violation of both federal law and United States Postal Service (USPS) rules that prescribe a specific closure process which requires, at minimum, 120 days’ notice,” a far cry from the three weeks under the current plan. By Tuesday evening, Coonan told Motherboard the post office had “walked back its position on closing the offices” and they are “currently reevaluating the situation.”
“It’s just asinine to think that you can shut something down or throttle it back in terms of the pandemic when basically the lifeline for voting and democracy is going to be in the hands of the Postal Service,” Manchin told reporters Wednesday.
But again, this is how the GOP defines law and order down, and democracy itself:
- Find the line.
- Step over it.
- Dare someone to push you back .
- No pushback? New line.
- Repeat.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes noted the slowdowns and vowed to not let them go unreported, “The only way that the administration can get away with gutting the post office is if they try to do it sneakily behind the scenes. And we’re not going to let them.”
There is more to the mail slowdown than Trump, Gordon reported days ago. Package deliveries are slower too:
DeJoy’s July 10 memo, titled “Pivoting For Our Future,” caught the media’s attention because of one particularly inflammatory line. “One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that—temporarily—we may see mail left behind or mail on the workroom floor or docks (in P&DCs [Processing and Distribution Centers]), which is not typical,” the memo stated.
Personnel cuts made to address the “fiscal kneecapping” of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act have left the popular service shorthanded during the pandemic. There are simply too many packages for the service to handle, a challenge that Congress has refused to address.
The same postal service will strain to deliver millions of mailed ballots this fall, Politico suggests:
The Postal Service hasn’t hit its own on-time delivery goals in five years, meaning that ballots may trickle in for days after an election. And now the pandemic is making successful deliveries more challenging. Mail across the system has slowed as more than 60 postal workers have been killed by the virus and thousands sickened or sent home to quarantine.
[…]
Those problems almost guarantee that everyone who loved the “hanging chads” debate of 2000 should steel themselves for the “what does that fuzzy postmark say?” debate of 2020. For the time being, different standards from state to state and slowed delivery times—both for absentee ballots going out and coming back—guarantee that tens of thousands of voted ballots nationwide will be thrown in the trash because they arrived too late to be counted. Pennsylvania, which now requires mailed ballots to be received by Election Day, rejected nearly 5 percent of absentee ballots in 2018, the vast majority because they arrived too late. Florida, home to George W. Bush’s 537-vote victory, tossed out 18,500 ballots that arrived too late to be counted in its primary this year.
Like it or not and whoever is to blame, timing when you mail your ballot is a real issue. In my county, 13 ballots postmarked in late February for March 3 primary arrived after March 6 cutoff. Just over 80 ballots in all went uncounted, included 35 postmarked after Election Day. It was a tiny fraction, a tenth of a percent of ballots cast. You just do not want yours in it.
I am advising voters here not to mail absentee ballots later than two weeks ahead of Election Day. Even better: Mail them back ASAP after receipt (North Carolina will mail absentee ballots September 4; find your state’s dates here), or drop them off in person ASAP at their local Board of Elections or at an early voting site for processing long before Election Day. Flatten the absentee ballot processing curve.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.