An article in today’s Guardian warns that “US Postal Service delays threaten to disrupt election voting. Potential problems include delays in getting mail ballots out to voters, missed deliveries to voters, and delays in returning properly postmarked ballots to local offices.
State and local election officials from across the country on Wednesday warned that problems with the nation’s mail delivery system threaten to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election, telling the head of the US Postal Service (USPS) that it hasn’t fixed persistent deficiencies.
The two groups, the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors, said local election officials “in nearly every state” are receiving timely postmarked ballots after election day and outside the three to five business days USPS claims as the standard for first-class mail.
The article describes problems that have not been fixed despite repeated efforts to communicate with USPS director DeJoy (aka DeStroy). As one might expect, he claims everything is fine, although one might suspect he is operating from a perspective that says if Democratic voters get disenfranchised, he can live just fine with that.
There is some effort in Congress to fix this, but it’s clear the USPS needs to be run by someone who actually cares about its historic mission.
The Save the Post Office Coalition, a coalition of over 300 groups including the ACLU, Public Citizen, NAACP and the American Postal Workers Union, have called for Congress to pass the Election Mail Act, authored by Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar and congresswoman Nikema Williams of Georgia, to improve election mail delivery and tracking security. The bill has not reached a vote in the House or Senate.
Cool historic fact: One of the first things that helped to bind the 13 colonies together, even before independence, was the establishment of a national postal service, replacing the British crown service. You can read about it here. Benjamin Franklin was the first Postmaster General. DeStroy is a disgrace to that fine history and legacy.
VOTE EARLY, and check to make sure your ballot gets counted! (In California, the system makes it very easy to do this.)
