President Sabotages Mail-in Voting (Part I)

[This is Part I of a two-part post on the impact of the slow-down in postal service on the Nov 3 election.]

As I have written before, the Republican Party has supported many forms of voter suppression over the last several decades: Voter-ID laws, reducing the number of polling places in poor, minority and immigrant areas, voter-roll purges and others.  President Trump has just discovered a new one: sabotaging mail delivery to interfere with mail-in voting.

In any political discussion of current voting in the United States, it is important from the very beginning to call out the Republican lie that there exists significant individual voter fraud in the country.  Multiple studies have confirmed that, for practical purposes, individual voter fraud (voting several times, impersonating another voter and so on) just does not happen.  In particular, despite the facts that absentee ballots have been permitted for years across the country and that universally available mail-in voting has been used in a majority of states, there is no evidence of voter fraud in mail-in voting.  Anyone who claims voter fraud as an issue in American elections is either ignorant or lying!  Period.

Mail-in voting does, however, have a significant impact: It increases voter turn-out. Despite a great deal of noise on both sides, most studies indicate that vote by-mail does not in itself advantage one party over the other.  Not surprisingly, of course, the party that works hardest to get out the mail-in vote benefits the most.  Since mail-in voting increases the total number of voters and does not increase voter fraud, the only possible reason for opposing it would be the desire to suppress the vote.

As a former businessman, President Trump has long railed against the US Postal Service (USPS) as an example of an inefficient public agency that does not pay for itself.  It is no surprise, however, USPS income does not meet its expenses:

• Congress mandates that the USPS deliver mail at the set cost (now $0.55) everywhere on American soil.
• Mail delivery to rural and other hard-to-reach areas does not come close paying for itself, but most would consider it an essential service.
• Private enterprises such as UPS and Fed-Ex are allowed to cherry-pick the most profitable elements of mail delivery (for instance, packages) without any obligation to serve everyone and can, therefore, underbid USPS.
  

In May of this year, President Trump appointed the Republican mega-donor Louis DeJoy Postmaster General despite his lack of any experience with the postal service.  Trump’s avowed purpose was to "streamline" the postal service and increase its efficiency.  The new Postmaster quickly announced changes to

• prohibit overtime,
• ban letter carriers from coming back to the central station to pick up more mail and return to the route,
• stop using automated letter-sorters that speed mail delivery, and
• prohibit the testing of new mail sorting and delivery policies.
  

Predictably, the changes have slowed mail delivery.  

Some states anticipate that mail-in voting will cause ten times the normal volume of mail.   Despite this anticipated deluge, post office executives in July maintained the cuts in services but issued a warning "that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted" and that even "if people follow all of their state’s election rules, the pace of Postal Service delivery may disqualify their votes."  It is not clear how much of this is routine ("covering their butt" in case things don't work out perfectly) and how much is a legitimate warning.  In any case, it raises the possibility of more chaos.

Republicans in Congress have routinely forced the underfunding of the USPS.  This year the postal service has sought $25 billion in emergency funding and the House of Representative passed a proposal to provide $3.6 billion in additional election funding to the states.  Both of those requests have been tied up in congressional negotiations over a new coronavirus relief packages.  President Trump has said that he opposes both, explicitly acknowledging that his purpose is to prevent the Democrats from expanding mail-in voting, that is, he is actually admitting to trying to suppress legitimate voting.

Trump's actions are difficult to understand, even from his own point of view.  Although mail-in voting itself does not seem to advantage either party, Republican leaders in swing states are huge fans because it encourages senior and other voters in rural areas to vote.  In fact, it may very well be that the President's warnings will discourage home-bound Republicans from using mail-in ballots.  

Yet more puzzling is his open, public acknowledgment that he is trying to suppress voting, a fundamental American right.

There are several basic issues here. 

• Trump's behavior gives further evidence of his unhinged  mental state.
• Trump is using his presidential power to trash long-standing norms and universally recognized rights.  The most important impact will be to throw much of the November 3 election into chaos.
  

- Many people will understandably be confused about how to vote.  
- For others, fear of the pandemic will keep them from the polls.  
- The ballots of those who do vote by mail may arrive too late to be counted.
- The postal slowdown may cause significant delays in declaring the winner, further undermining the integrity of the elections.
- Trump may, conceivably, use any uncertainty about the results to reinforce his continued claim of “rigged elections” and use the unconstitutional claim to stay in office. 

[Continued in Part 2 tomorrow.]