The Nevada state legislature passed a bill to mail ballots to voters before the November election, and Donald Trump is Not Happy. He’s also using his own destruction of the Postal Service as a reason for why voting by mail couldn’t work.
“In an illegal late night coup, Nevada’s clubhouse Governor made it impossible for Republicans to win the state,” Trump tweeted. “Post Office could never handle the Traffic of Mail-In Votes without preparation. Using Covid to steal the state. See you in Court!”
In fact, Gov. Steve Sisolak has yet to sign the bill, though he is expected to do so, and the bill also includes provisions ensuring that there will be many more in-person voting locations in November than there were in the primary, when voters faced ridiculously long lines. So the bill is intended to make it easier to vote in multiple ways, not solely by mail.
But let’s talk about the “Post Office could never handle the Traffic of Mail-In Votes without preparation.”
The Postal Service’s immediate and rapidly escalating troubles are directly attributable to Donald Trump. Trump blocked meaningful aid to the Postal Service in the CARES Act in March. He installed a major Republican donor with no postal experience as postmaster general (the first time a postmaster general hasn’t had a long history with the Postal Service), and that donor, Louis DeJoy, quickly swung into action, slowing mail delivery times and creating major backlogs. That’s all happening as Trump has attacked the idea of voting by mail literally dozens of times.
Now as the states start to take action to keep their voters safe in a pandemic that makes in-person voting both time-consuming and risky, Trump is using the damage he has intentionally inflicted on the Postal Service as a reason not to do the thing (vote-by-mail) he damaged the Postal Service to prevent. It’s a classic Republican move, but that doesn’t make it any less brazen or offensive.
Donald Trump is a danger to U.S. democracy. His war on the Postal Service isn’t the only reason that’s true, but it’s definitely on the list.