Trump is literally destroying the capacity of the US Postal Service to do its Constitutionally-appointed job by cutting hours, cutting deliveries, and removing mail-sorting machines and destroying them, and the plan to do this has been in the works for months now.
The United States Postal Service proposed removing 20 percent of letter sorting machines it uses around the country before revising the plan weeks later to closer to 15 percent of all machines, meaning 502 will be taken out of service, according to documents obtained by Motherboard outlining the agency’s plans. USPS workers told Motherboard this will slow their ability to sort mail.
One of the documents also suggests these changes were in the works before Louis DeJoy, a top Trump donor and Republican fundraiser, became postmaster general, because it is dated May 15, a month before DeJoy assumed office and only nine days after the Board of Governors announced his selection.
The title of the presentation, as well as language used in the notice to union officials, undermines the Postal Service’s narrative that the organization is simply “mov[ing] equipment around its network” to optimize processing, as spokesperson Dave Partenheimer told Motherboard on Thursday. The May document clearly calls the initiative an “equipment reduction.” It makes no mention of the machines being moved to other facilities. And the notice to union officials repeatedly uses the same phrase. Multiple sources within the postal service told Motherboard they have personally witnessed the machines, which cost millions of dollars, being destroyed or thrown in the dumpster. USPS did not respond to a request for comment.
In May, the USPS planned to remove a total of 969 sorting machines out of the 4,926 it had in operation as of February for all types of letters and flat mail. The vast majority of them—746 out of 3,765 in use—were delivery bar code sorters (DBCS), the type that sort letters, postcards, ballots, marketing mail and other similarly sized pieces. But a subsequent document distributed to union officials in mid-June said 502 of those machines would be removed from facilities.
The May document, titled “Equipment Reduction,” breaks down the exact number of machines the USPS slated to remove by region and facility. Although the document uses terms like “proposed reduction” and “reduction plan” and does not reflect the USPS’s final plan, it provides a general picture of the sweeping changes previously reported by Motherboard about mail sorting machines being removed around the country. It also shows that USPS management is undertaking a broad reduction of the agency’s ability to sort and process all types of mail, except for packages which have been steadily increasing in recent years before booming during the pandemic.
Further, the timeline of the May document did not come to pass. It proposed a plan resulting in the machines being removed by the end of July, but that didn’t happen. Interviews with six postal workers and union officials around the country, who spoke to Motherboard on condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak to the media, revealed these machine removals are still occurring in Michigan, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Texas.
More machine removals are planned in the months ahead. The document sent to union officials in June shows an updated plan to extend the machine removal timeline through the first quarter of 2021.
The Postal Service now says thanks to Trump shooting them in the head on Fifth Avenue, that it can no longer guarantee mail-in ballots can be delivered on time to state voting officials in November.
Anticipating an avalanche of absentee ballots, the U.S. Postal Service recently sent detailed letters to 46 states and D.C. warning that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted — adding another layer of uncertainty ahead of the high-stakes presidential contest.
The letters sketch a grim possibility for the tens of millions of Americans eligible for a mail-in ballot this fall: Even if people follow all of their state’s election rules, the pace of Postal Service delivery may disqualify their votes.
The Postal Service’s warnings of potential disenfranchisement came as the agency undergoes a sweeping organizational and policy overhaul amid dire financial conditions. Cost-cutting moves have already delayed mail delivery by as much as a week in some places, and a new decision to decommission 10 percent of the Postal Service’s sorting machines sparked widespread concern the slowdowns will only worsen. Rank-and-file postal workers say the move is ill-timed and could sharply diminish the speedy processing of flat mail, including letters and ballots.
The ballot warnings, issued at the end of July from Thomas J. Marshall, general counsel and executive vice president of the Postal Service, and obtained through a records request by The Washington Post, were planned before the appointment of Louis DeJoy, a former logistics executive and ally of President Trump, as postmaster general in early summer. They go beyond the traditional coordination between the Postal Service and election officials, drafted as fears surrounding the coronavirus pandemic triggered an unprecedented and sudden shift to mail-in voting.
Some states anticipate 10 times the normal volume of election mail. Six states and D.C. received warnings that ballots could be delayed for a narrow set of voters. But the Postal Service gave 40 others — including the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida — more-serious warnings that their long-standing deadlines for requesting, returning or counting ballots were “incongruous” with mail service and that voters who send ballots in close to those deadlines may become disenfranchised.
“The Postal Service is asking election officials and voters to realistically consider how the mail works,” Martha Johnson, a spokeswoman for the USPS, said in a statement.
In response to the Postal Service’s warnings, a few states have quickly moved deadlines — forcing voters to request or cast ballots earlier, or deciding to delay tabulating results while waiting for more ballots to arrive.
Pennsylvania election officials cited its letter late Thursday in asking the state’s Supreme Court for permission to count ballots delivered three days after Election Day. But deadlines in many other states have not been or cannot be adjusted with just weeks remaining before the first absentee ballots hit the mail stream. More than 60 lawsuits in at least two dozen states over the mechanics of mail-in voting are wending their way through the courts.
Because the Trump regime is deliberately destroying the US Postal Service, the next several months will now be one huge chaotic binge of voting lawsuits that critically breaks our capacity to hold free and fair elections, with Donald Trump anticipating that he'll be able to steal the election regardless of the outcome with the help of enough GOP state legislatures, Republican US House delegations, and the US Supreme Court.
The Republican party would rather destroy American democracy than allow half the country to vote during a pandemic.
If we do not fight this now, they will destroy it.
Your members of Congress are home for the rest of the month. It's time to give your Representatives and Senators a call at their home offices and make it clear this isn't going to be allowed to happen without a fight.
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