https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/trump-postal-service-sabotage-vote-by-mail.html
Is Trump Sabotaging the Postal Service?
By Mary Harris
Aug 10, 20201:11 PM
If you click online on the “official organizational chart” for the U.S. Postal Service, you’re likely to get one of those 404 page not found messages. At least, that’s what happened to me when I recently tried to figure it out what was going on at the post office. That’s because a couple of days ago, who is doing what at the Postal Service changed radically. About 23 executives resigned or were replaced. People have been concerned because USPS is finding itself stretched increasingly thin. It’s running out of money, like a lot of businesses that are dealing with this coronavirus. It’s being led by a new postmaster general, a guy known for pushing workers to a breaking point. There’s a slowdown in post office service that you can feel across the country. And all this is happening as it’s begun to dawn on many politicians just how essential the mail will be come November.
I spoke with Slate’s Jordan Weissmann about what’s happening and what Washington needs to do to get you your mail and ensure a free and fair election. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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Jordan Weissmann: Early on in the coronavirus crisis, it was very obvious that the Postal Service was going to be in financial trouble. And they started asking for a fairly large bailout, which Donald Trump was not at all on board with because the entire Trump administration hates the Postal Service. Trump has been ranting and raving about it for years now for all sorts of reasons.
The thing to realize about the Postal Service’s financial troubles is that most of them really have been due to this prefunding requirement. Back in 2006, Congress decided that the Postal Service should have to prefund about 75 years’ worth of its retiree health benefits.
Mary Harris: Does any other organization do this?
No, nobody does this. It’s insane. It immediately started to go wrong because they passed this and then we got the Great Recession, and the Postal Service just got walloped. And so for years and years after this, the Postal Service has been putting up these huge paper losses, the majority of which have come from this prefunding requirement.
These losses are on paper, but it’s still prevented them from really investing in modernizing their operations. And they have also faced legitimate challenges. The volume of first-class mail—just letters—which is their bread and butter, has decreased enormously, thanks to the internet. That’s been balanced out a good deal by package delivery. And that’s helped a lot. So the Postal Service’s financial troubles are partly a result of its core business declining. But they are also largely a creation of Congress. And so that’s why the whole idea of just totally trashing the service to save money on the edges is so, so absurd.
Let’s talk about the new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy. As soon as he took the helm, folks started ringing the alarms. Explain a little bit who he is.
Louis DeJoy is a former logistics executive. One of the first things that most people noticed when he was selected to be the postmaster general was that he was a major Republican donor. He’s given apparently about $2.5 million to the Republican Party. He also donated to Donald Trump’s victory fund. People immediately started to worry that Donald Trump was putting a flunky in charge of the Postal Service. [Editor’s note: The postmaster general is not directly appointed by the president but by the Postal Service Board of Governors, which consists of nine governors appointed by the president.] The reason this would concern people is because Donald Trump has spent the last several years trashing the Postal Service, calling it a joke, saying how it needs to increase package prices, mostly because he hates Amazon, because Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post.
He’s called it Jeff Bezos’ delivery boy. He’s call it the Amazon scam. He’s baselessly talked about how the Postal Service is supposedly giving Amazon a sweetheart shipping deal. He has had this vendetta against the Postal Service for a variety of reasons for a long time. Then also he’s been waging war against vote by mail for the last several months. And so we’ve had all these reasons to be worried about Donald Trump’s ill intentions for the United States Postal Service. And then he puts this guy who looks a lot like a flunky in charge of it.
As I was looking into this story, I wanted a better picture of how postal workers were thinking of Louis DeJoy.
They were not happy! He is not pro-labor. And that is one of the core tensions between conservatives and the Postal Service. Why a lot of conservatives despise the Postal Service is because it’s a huge, huge unionized workforce. They see it as the enemy in a lot of ways, and there’s a racial element to this because it’s a large unionized workforce with a lot of Black employees. Conservatives have wanted to spin it off and privatize it and break the union for years now. This guy they’ve put in charge is sort of the antithesis of what the Postal Service stands for. He’s a union-busting former private logistics executive. It’s very much the fox in charge of the henhouse.
Let’s lay out exactly what he did when he took this job, because very quickly he started remaking the organization.
Within about a month of arriving, he announced an “operational pivot.” No one ever wants to hear about an operational pivot. It was a series of cost-cutting measures. He said there would be no more overtime pay. He told letter carriers that they were not to return to pick up mail that had to be left on the factory floor. If they couldn’t make it all in one trip, they were just to leave it there. You make your one scheduled delivery and if stuff doesn’t fit on the truck, too bad, we get it the next day.
Is there a charitable interpretation of this?
The most charitable interpretation is that he’s trying to save a little bit of money for the Postal Service because it’s had these big “losses” over the past decade and it’s time for it to become more efficient and lose less money. But even that is extremely penny-wise and poun- foolish. These changes have resulted in massive backlogs in mail that are undermining people’s faith in the Postal Service’s ability to do its basic job. If you were trying to fix an organization and get it in shape for the long term, this is not the approach you would take.
And we should lay out really explicitly why a lot of politicians are thinking about this in terms of the election, because in 34 states, you don’t just have to have your absentee ballot postmarked by Election Day. It has to be received by Election Day. So you can see how a well-meaning person could drop off their ballot a few days earl, and it still wouldn’t reach the destination on time.
There is a concern about whether people will get their ballot on time and whether they’ll be able to get it delivered to the county election office on time. We’ve seen some discouraging signs already, for instance, with the Michigan primary, where some people weren’t getting their ballot until literally the day before. There have been signs that this is not an imaginary problem, that this is a real and present danger, and DeJoy has so far given absolutely no signal that he has any real plan to fix this problem.
Congress could get out in front of an election disaster here by making restoring the Postal Service a sticking point of the next coronavirus relief package. But it’ll take more than just money, right?
It’s pretty obvious at this point that just giving the USPS more cash is not good enough because it’s not clear that the Trump administration or Louis DeJoy would actually use the money. If Democrats and Republicans can reach some sort of a deal on coronavirus relief, that bill needs to contain a bailout for the Postal Service that, one, provides more money and, two, tells the Postal Service how it has to use the money and how it has to restore service. And has to speed up delivery back to where it was. And prioritize ballots. As I discovered while I was talking to some appropriations experts, there are all sorts of backhanded ways the Trump administration could actually basically impound any money Congress wanted to give it, if they’re not careful and don’t put restrictions on it.
Is it crazy to think that Republicans might want to help Democrats save the Postal Service?
It’s crossed my mind. I don’t know. It’s hard. There’s also a large contingent of the party right now that’s actually happy to just not pass any bill to deal with coronavirus relief at this point.
But the USPS is the most popular federal agency, like more popular than parks, more popular than NASA.
But again, you have to realize that they really hate the Postal Service. A lot of dyed-in-the-wool conservatives really, truly dislike it. But I think the reason why some conservatives might want to fix this issue is that Republicans are worried that their elderly voters in places like Florida are going to get screwed by this because they rely on vote by mail. We saw a little bit of movement on this from Trump, where after months and months of talking about how voting by mail wasn’t reliable and was fraudulent, he suddenly reversed course and said, except in Florida! In Florida, vote by mail is great. They have an established system and absentee ballots there are totally safe.
And of course that’s where the president votes. By mail.
And has for a while. And so it was silly. And it clearly shows how some Republicans are whispering in his ear, Hey, you might be screwing us over, too, by doing this. And so maybe, just maybe, that provides an opening to actually try to take action to fix what’s wrong with the Postal Service right now. But I would not count on a big hand from Republicans on this. Let’s put it that way. There needs to be as much volume about this as possible as soon as possible. If I’m the Democrats right now, I’m just talking every single day about how Donald Trump is sabotaging the Postal Service.
A lot of the criticism of DeJoy from postal experts has been that he talks about the USPS as a business. But they say it’s not a business, it’s a service—it’s a Postal Service. Do you buy it? Do you agree with that?
Yeah, it is a service. It’s in the goddamn Constitution. For various reasons, the Postal Service is treated as an independent agency that’s supposed to sort of be self-sustaining. And I don’t think it’s totally crazy to look for the Postal Service to kind of sort of break even. You don’t want to be spending taxpayer dollars deeply subsidizing Amazon deliveries. Private corporate customers and such should probably be paying their fair share. But at the same time, there’s no reason not to treat the mail as a government service. There’s no reason to be thinking of it as a profit-making entity. If you believe in government services, the Postal Service is kind of the original. It’s the thing that actually made this big sprawling country into something approximating a unified whole—that you could send letters across it and the government would carry them. So, yeah. I think treating it as a business is a little bit base and a little bit wrong, and it tells you a lot about the people who do that. They can’t conceive of something as just a public good.
Yes
There is no question that he is doing so. He has essentially admitted it, and since he has been working hard to discredit mail-in voting, his followers lap it up.
Does he mean this chart?
Does he mean this chart?
It's up here: https://about.usps.com/who/leadership/officers/ , and posted 8/7/20 which doesn't mean it was up while she was researching the article, dated 8/10. There are too many reports through out USPS to ignore this is rumor.
It was put forth a few years ago that the USPS could save money by shutting down Saturday delivery.
Didn't go anywhere.
Proposals to put PO box type units at new sub divisions went nowhere.
Amazon and UPS do help by paying for small items to be delivered through USPS.
How about we have a law that the candidates not use the "franknig" service during elections. If you are running for election, no free mail service since almost anything sent out will be election connected.
All this unsolicited mail sent out (insurance offers, burial plots, time share offers) must be sent out with a stamp attached, not a little quip like "postage paid, 3rd class".
Let's get it actually generating money again.
It was put forth a few years ago that the USPS could save money by shutting down Saturday delivery.
Didn't go anywhere.
Proposals to put PO box type units at new sub divisions went nowhere.Amazon and UPS do help by paying for small items to be delivered through USPS.
How about we have a law that the candidates not use the "franknig" service during elections. If you are running for election, no free mail service since almost anything sent out will be election connected.
All this unsolicited mail sent out (insurance offers, burial plots, time share offers) must be sent out with a stamp attached, not a little quip like "postage paid, 3rd class".
Let's get it actually generating money again.
I hate the junk that USPS traffics, it's incredibly wasteful. Every day, many people have gone to a lot of trouble to ask me, "here, you throw this away." But a lot of the bulk mail does help pay for the service. And it is a service, it's never meant to break even or be self-sustaining. I'm not sure how much Amazon's own delivery fleet (or the increase in UPS and FedEx) have cut into USPS's take over the past decade, but the timing of the dismantling makes it apparent that this isn't a cost-saving measure.
I guess Trump figures that with no postal service - his picture will never appear on post office walls.
I guess his ego's okay with never having his face on a postage stamp - as his entire head will one day appear on Mt. Rushmore. 😉
I ship products directly from any number of printers across the country. In the past month I've had 3 USPS shipments that stopped moving for 2 weeks, 2 of which completely disappeared. One made it all the way to the destination post office and simply vanished. Never had this happen even once before.
A postal worker posted to put 2 first class stamps on your ballot and it will be processed with the 1st class mail and won't get bogged down in the free business bulk mail. Buying stamps also helps fund the USPS
Dozens of Montana USPS drop boxes removed
https://nbcmontana.com/news/local/dozens-of-montana-usps-drop-boxes-removed
Postal Service removes some mail-sorting machines, sparking concerns ahead of election
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/13/politics/postal-service-sorting-machines/index.html
If these moves were part of a larger shakeup to improve efficiency or be fiscally responsible, there should be transparency. Without that, it appears to be a gutting.
trump should be charged with tampering, and election interference.
Sonewall Jackson Trump puts one of his crony pal big donors in charge of the postal system who has no experience in this. A few months before the election his pal puts in "cost saving measures" at the same time that a pandemic begs for more vote by mail, Trump rails against vote by mail claiming w/out any evidence that there will be significant fraud in the election. Couldn't be more clearer here what's going on.
Sorting machines removed from post offices:
> https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/13/politics/postal-service-sorting-machines/index.html < Bottom line - Trump depends upon Russia and sabotaging the postal system for any chance at winning. He truly is interefering with an election. What a desperate and pathetic excuse for a "leader" he is.
I find it amazing how many Trump supporters are fine with his sabotaging the post office, a service they use all the time, just because they don't like the idea of mail in ballots (except in Florida apparently). It simply boggles the mind.
I find it amazing how many Trump supporters are fine with his sabotaging the post office, a service they use all the time, just because they don't like the idea of mail in ballots (except in Florida apparently). It simply boggles the mind.
Think about this. During a pandemic when mail in votes makes so much sense, Trump is basically saying 1) deny people who can't get to the polls a vote, and 2) the risk of voters contracting Covid is OK with him if they go the polls to vote.
Disrupting a democratic process is fair game for Trump. Just another day in the Trump admin.
Remember Wisconsin several months ago during their primaries.
Wisconsin health department: 36 people positive for coronavirus after primary vote
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/27/wisconsin-tested-positive-coronavirus-election-211495
Think about this. During a pandemic when mail in votes makes so much sense, Trump is basically saying 1) deny people who can't get to the polls a vote, and 2) the risk of voters contracting Covid is OK with him if they go the polls to vote.
Except in FL. Trump requested mail in ballots for himself & Melania for FL's primary. On the surface, that seems like he's in favor of the process, but he just requested it for Tues's election. Palm Beach election officials sent it to Mar-a-Lago per his request w/less than a week to go before the election. The chances of them getting it, voting, returning? If it fails, he blames the USPS.
In good news, the USPS Office of Inspector General is reviewing DeJoy's changes for ethical violations as well as the validity of the changes to report to Congress. One concern is DeJoy's $30 million stock in his former company - a USPS contractor - and his holdings in amazon - a USPS competitor.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/14/politics/postal-service-inspector-general-reviewing-dejoy/index.html
Trump can spin it to his favor: Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren requested the review so it's political and/or the USPS is so bad that it's own IG is reviewing it.
Michigan's law allows for ballots to be mailed to voters up to 4 days before the election. Talk about setting up for failure. There can't be a guarantee that a voter requesting a ballot that late will receive it in time. Even one full week would be pushing it to mail out and back. That is in normal times, UPS and FedEx are not guaranteeing their next-day and two-day service right now due to coronavirus complications at some of their facilities, and people pay good money for that service. Pay $20 to have a two-day letter sent and it comes in 3 days, you are SOL, no refund. I generally think FedEx and UPS are pretty well run, and if they aren't guaranteeing their services how can USPS, during a pandemic with a surge of mail nationwide?
Consider that mail sorting and distribution centers have been closing over the years. Youngstown OH no longer has one. If I want to send my ballot to the county board of elections, it has to go to Cleveland and come back. Not normally a problem, but if I wait until close to the deadline and it gets delayed there would be a chance that it doesn't make it.
So while a lot is being made of what might be going on to hamper USPS's ability, I think voters need to take some responsibility to vote early enough so that potential hangups in the USPS system don't effect their vote. And deadlines to request and send back ballots need to be realistic.
I don't have a problem with mail in voting, but how it's done and what the expectations are matter.
My wife and I received a mail in ballot request form. I am going to request one. My wife wants to vote in person.
I keep saying this, but the good thing about Covid19's pause in place is it presents the opportunity to re-think and/or accelerate changes that are long overdue. Voting is one of them. Aren't polling precinct obsolete? Why, in 2020, should we expect 300 million people to leave home & converge on one location between specific hours just to vote? After the 2000 hanging chad fiasco, I would think we'd be voting online by now - skipping over vote by mail.
I usually work as a legal representative at a poll on election day - ostensibly making sure everyone is in the right place, not voting multiple times, ensuring disabled voters are accommodated, & overseeing the sealing of the ballots - which is literally 2 people hand-tallying or using an ADDING MACHINE for each voting booth & then transferring that info to a form that person #2 checks for accuracy & then putting the form in an envelope & I along w/a registered Republican counterpart watch them seal the envelope, we sign the unbroken seal, & hand it to someone from the elections board who is doing pick-up. Sound like an air-tight procedure to you?
Trump's missing the point that both voting in-person & mail are antiquated, but he does draw attention to the fact that the system is ripe for error. This isn't 1920 when those in a rural area made the trek into town to cast their votes or the 1970s when employees were given an extra hour to vote in their suburban home precinct before/aftertaking the train to the city for work.
Spot on Cyclone.....Yet another example of how the supposed "greatest nation on earth" is stuck using technology and procedures well past their expiration date. To me voting is similar to a great deal of the rest of America's infrastructure, crumbling and obsolete!
We'll drop half a trillion on a stealth fighter plane just as obsolete but won't spend a few billion on modern state of the art election technology. I guess there just isn't enough profit motive in a secure, relatively simple voting process... 
[Edited on 8/16/2020 by Chain]
Yet another example of how the supposed "greatest nation on earth" is stuck using technology and procedures well past their expiration date. To me voting is similar to a great deal of the rest of America's infrastructure, crumbling and obsolete!...I guess there just isn't enough profit motive in a secure, relatively simple voting process.
That's why I raised the issue of being stuck in Covid paralysis. If companies are going out of business & jobs in many sectors are lost forever, why not spend $$ to develop new techniques/procedures to replace those that were predictably antiquated - like voting, education, & retail in addition to upgrading infrastructure. The motive becomes one of developing & training replacement opportunities rather than profit. Of course, that requires strategic leadership...
Some rural routes apparently have delivery subcontracted out. My friend who lives in central Colorado mountains said their mail carrier's private van has been broke down on the side of the road for 3 days now...since then their delivery has been all messed up. On top of that he says according to tracking numbers, him and his parents both have packages that have been sitting at the Denver distribution facility for two weeks with no tracking update since it got there. Not the first time. USPS could use an overhaul, one problem, it's run by the government so I don't have high hopes.
Some rural routes apparently have delivery subcontracted out. My friend who lives in central Colorado mountains said their mail carrier's private van has been broke down on the side of the road for 3 days now...since then their delivery has been all messed up. On top of that he says according to tracking numbers, him and his parents both have packages that have been sitting at the Denver distribution facility for two weeks with no tracking update since it got there. Not the first time. USPS could use an overhaul, one problem, it's run by the government so I don't have high hopes.
No question an overhaul is needed. What is not needed is cost cutting measures and "streamlining" 3 months ahead of a national election in a pandemic by a million dollar Trump contributor who has personal and professional conflicts of interest. I'll leave it to legal minds to determine if there are criminal violations.
It definitely can't hurt to update USPS considering the changes in mail and options have evolved over the past 2 decades (fewer letters, more packages). But USPS has always been remarkably efficient, and that is what is being destroyed.
The biggest hurdle to updating USPS are its fleet of unionized employees - that's a big ship to turn around, but they did their job. Now they are directed to not do their job which jeopardizes the service, which allows customers to complain about the service. No doubt that's all part of the plan, regardless of election. There are businesses that rely on USPS, this disruption isn't isolated.
Some rural routes apparently have delivery subcontracted out.
Trump's buddy turned Postmaster General DeJoy IS a contractor for the USPS (company is called XPO Logistics) & his company uses subcontractors. Conflict of interest? Sure way to make sure things don't get done? He also just acquired stock in amazon - a USPS competitor. DeJoy started the job in June - about the time Trump start complaining about the USPS.
There was another mail-in vote thread on the old site, but it didn't transfer over.
Just wanted to say I've received two different mail-in ballot request forms...maybe I'll end up with two ballots...and Trump wants me to use both! How does the saying go - 'vote early, and often'.
I got my third mail-in ballot request form.
@nebish Just the request form, right? Are they all identical, akin to receiving multiple census reminders?
Yes, just request forms. Two have come from Center for Voter Information and one from the state.
Thing is I returned one of those forms pretty soon after I got the first one. Wonder if I will keep getting them even though I've already requested one.
