Trump and new postmaster general's corruption of the Postal Service could harm the election

Daily Kos Staff

Monday July 20, 2020 · 1:01 PM PDT

2020/07/20 · 13:01

A mailman wearing a mask and gloves to protect himself and others from COVID-19, known as coronavirus, loads a postal truck with packages at a United States Postal Service (USPS) post office location in Washington, DC, April 16, 2020. - For many Americans, checking the mailbox is a daily ritual, a constant in a quickly changing world that can yield anything from wedding invitations to tax audits to new clothes..But as with many ordinary things as the coronavirus crisis unfolds, the US Postal Service -- already compromised by a mountain of debt -- has a most uncertain future. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Donald K. Sherman, deputy director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, D.C., and Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, have a warning for the nation: Donald Trump's election of crony and big donor Louis DeJoy to leave the U.S. Postal Service "threatens to corrupt one of America's most trusted institutions at a key moment." The institution is the U.S. Postal Service, and the key moment is November's election, conducted in the middle of a pandemic.

"Without increased and sustained scrutiny of DeJoy's leadership of the Postal Service, our democracy could face dire consequences," Sherman and Albert write. "Having a political ally with ethical and competence questions like DeJoy lead the agency potentially puts November's election at risk." Millions of voters are going to be voting absentee this year because of the coronavirus. The perfect storm of a pandemic, the most corrupt person to ever sit in the Oval Office, a Republican rubber stamp in the Senate, an already-weakened Postal Service, and a Trump lackey in charge of the institution is extraordinarily dangerous. From now until Nov. 3 is a short timeframe for Trump to destroy public trust in both the Postal Service and in the election system, but it appears he's going to do his damnedest.

In his Fox interview Sunday with Chris Wallace, Trump threatened to ignore the results of the election should he lose, and said: "You don't know until you see, I think it depends. I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election," Trump said. "I really do." That's despite the fact that "Trump himself and over 20 members of his family, administration, campaign team, and other top officials in his orbit have voted or tried to vote by mail in recent years."

Of course it's different when you're set to lose—again—the popular vote. He's got an accomplice now in the Postal Service. Already LeJoy has moved to sabotage the Postal Service with a number of edicts that will end up forcing carriers to slow down delivery of the mail, including first-class mail. That this particularly hurts Indigenous, Black, and Latino people—particularly those who live in rural areas and those who don't have access to privatized delivery systems—is a very large part of the point for Trump. That it also harms rural people who rely on the Postal Service, many of whom voted for Trump last time around, is an unfortunate byproduct. It will be a painful byproduct, however, for a lot of Republican senators who represent states with large rural populations.

Trump and new postmaster general's corruption of the Postal Service could harm the election

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