Destroy the Post Office, Steal an Election
My mom called me with her serious tone that tells me something terrible has happened and I held my breath. “I just mailed the box, Aim,” she said in a hushed and hesitant tone. “It cost over $80.00 and I just…” I didn’t let her finish before I launched into a tirade of disbelief that no doubt included several expletives. Since I had to cancel my trip home for my birthday, I had asked her to forward some deliveries that had been sitting at her house for months now and told her I would pay for it. She apparently added some surprises into that box, but I did not expect a shipping fee this big.
(A US Post Office sign in the lobby of a post office in San Francisco, California on May 11, 2009. Photo by Justin Sullivan, via Getty Images.)
I am ashamed to say that my mother received the brunt of my disbelief and I feel guilty about it. But, how could mailing a box from Arizona to Washington, D.C. cost that much, and how can the US postal rates keep fluctuating at these levels? It has been two weeks since the package, that we now call the “box of gold” has been sent, and it is delayed because it was supposedly sent to Los Angles. When I transferred the money to my mom’s bank account to pay her back for the shipping costs, I added “for highway robbery” in the memo line.
Many of us are hearing the rumors about how mail is being purposely slowed to frustrate people and make them believe the U.S. Post Office is incompetent. The latest one, which is highly improbable because it would take more work and coordination, is that the post office is intentionally losing and delaying delivery in only swing states that are leaning toward Biden. But, something is going on, and I’m wondering if it goes deeper than the increase in pandemic deliveries.
This week, Trump announced on Twitter that mail-in voting was safe now in the state of Florida because the supposedly defunct system was cleaned up by Republicans. On Tuesday, at a White House Press Briefing, he expressed confidence in Florida’s ability to administer wide-scale mail balloting saying, "[the state has] really got a great system of absentee ballots." But, experts are now attributing this shift in tenor by the president to one simple truth: he knows he can’t win Florida if Republicans don’t feel like they can safely vote by mail.
Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida, explained her theory to NPR saying, "Florida is an absolute must-have for Trump and everyone knows that, and he knows it as well." MacManus went on to explain, “if he suddenly, through attacking vote-by-mail, keeps a substantial group of Florida voters from going to the polls, that's not good for his chances of winning."
Anyone with common sense can discern that if Trump now claims that a national delivery service controlled by the federal government can “fix” any supposed glitches in one state, then clearly those problems are not really at issue in other states. Trump’s premise that only the states he has “corrected” will be safe moving forward is really more of an attack on the states with Democratic governors, not the US Postal Service.
(Vote-by-mail ballots for the presidential primary are sorted at King County Elections in Renton, Washington on March 10, 2020. Photo by Jason Redmond/AFP, via Getty Images.)
But one significant problem exists that should make us question the direction of the postal service: the placement of top a Republican fundraiser and Trump ally, into the position of Postmaster General in May of this year. Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman who was previously in charge of fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, is now in control of an agency that Trump has deemed to be “rigged.” Indeed, it very well might be now.
Conditions were placed on the US Postal Service, that included dramatically raising their delivery fees (yeah, no kidding) in exchange for a $10 billion line of credit necessary to keep the service going through the pandemic. David Williams, the vice chairman on the board of governors, resigned shortly after Trump rewarded DeJoy with the post, and this leaves only one other Democrat on the board with several other Republicans.
(Greensboro businessman Louis DeJoy was was recently rewarded by Trump with a position as Postmaster General.)
According to four sources speaking to The Washington Post, “[Williams’] main frustration is that he felt the Treasury Department was interfering in an apolitical board and an apolitical agency.” Megan Brennan, the previous postmaster general, who announced her retirement late last year, had clashed with Trump over his administration’s efforts to take more control over postal finances and operations, such as insisting that Amazon pay higher delivery fees.
Trump’s claim in the Oval Office in April of this year, that “The Postal Service is a joke,” appears to be true on the basis that Trump has made it so. The real question that remains is whether instituting another Trump crony as the head of the USPS will actually give him any control over mail-in ballots. Primaries all over the country, that have been conducted in states that utilize mail-in ballots, have shown that this form of mail service remains unaffected.
Trump’s plan to weaken the consumer’s confidence in the federal agency by increasing prices and decreasing service is likely to take some toll. We can all bear with some delays for deliveries in the spirit of coming together during a pandemic, as long as the regular letter mail remains safe.
(A Seattle woman holds up her vote-by-mail ballot at the Seattle Center Armory in Seattle, Washington, U.S., on February 22, 2020. Photo by Jason Redmond, via Reuters.)
I’m not sure if there is any credibility to any of these rumors, which are mostly just rumors at this point. Proof of any wrongdoing will surely come out eventually, it always does. What concerns me is that any evidence of this will be so after the fact that we won’t be able to amend the result — think proof of Russian election tampering in 2016. The big question now is whether the nation will be deterred in utilizing the vote by mail feature in states where it is available. The answer to that question seems too important to speculate about, given what is at stake.
For the next post in this ongoing series about the Trump administration’s efforts to sabotage the US Postal Service from the inside-out, read: Friday Night Massacre at the Post Office.
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Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter and is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines and analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.
Everyone needs to check with your local election precinct and ask if mail-in ballots can be dropped off during early voting. I’m not counting on the USPS this year; I’ll drop mine right at City Hall.
Let me start out by saying I think the USPS is a vital agency and we need to do all we can to save it. But I know that $80 hurt! Last December I went to the Post Office to mail a package to my niece in California. It was 12" x 12" and weighed 13 lbs. The cost was $68! I was astounded. I've mailed enough packages over the years to know that the cost had gone up by 100%. I had a talk with the clerk at the counter, and told him I thought the post office was gouging customers to subsidize lower shipping fees for companies like Amazon. He said, "Especially with those free returns." It made me realize that consumers, who already pay dozens of obscure taxes and costs to subsidize corporate America, are subsidzing Jeff Bezos' cost of doing business. That said, yes, this is one more way Trump is trying to steal the election. I cannot believe it has come to this. If the Dems don't capitalize on this, ("Americans, did you fail to get your medicine on time? Thanks to President Trump...)