CEO Update: President Trump just admitted he’s blocking USPS funding to keep citizens from voting
President Trump continues his attempts to delegitimize the election months before it takes place. First he launched a sustained attack against voting by mail, then he suggested delaying the election. He’s even placed a campaign donor with clear conflicts of interest as Postmaster General of the United States Postal Service. Now, the President has explicitly told reporters that he’s blocking $25 billion in emergency funds for the U.S. Postal Service because Democrats want to expand mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.
It’s like something out of a bad episode of House of Cards — a president attempting to crash the Postal Service — an iconic American institution with roots older than the country itself — in the middle of a pandemic in order to block the one way that people can vote safely in November without putting their lives at risk. You cannot make this stuff up.
According to the Washington Post:
“Now, they need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo. He added: “Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it.”
Unbelievable. The U.S. Postal Service is enshrined in the Constitution and is a public service to the people of this country. It is not a business that needs to turn a profit — it is a government service. And during COVID, it’s a lifeline for many Americans — including Veterans and the elderly — that depend on the mail service for things like life-supporting prescription medicines.
Yet, it appears that President Trump’s hand-picked Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, is implementing his boss’s plan to dismantle the Post Service and thwart mail in voting.
DeJoy, a highly partisan friend of and donor to the president, is using his newfound power as Postmaster General of the USPS to deliberately disrupt and delay the delivery of mail ahead of the November election. This means millions of mail-in ballots are at risk of not being submitted in time. We need to work that much harder now to make sure everyone requests their mail-in ballots now and returns it well ahead of the election.
In the midst of the COVID pandemic, as Americans seek to vote by mail for personal safety and public health concerns, DeJoy is actively dismantling the USPS from within. He’s purposely slowing down mail service and removing mailboxes in local communities, and removing critical mail sorting equipment with no explanation — the exact sorting equipment that sorts election mail. He’s freezing hiring and is trying to force non-union postal employees into early retirement. And DeJoy is trying to nearly triple the cost of sending mail-in ballots this November. This is not by accident — it is by design and is part of an ongoing plan to disrupt the November elections by causing many mail-in ballots to miss deadlines and votes not be counted.
Instead of making sure that all Americans can safely vote in November during a pandemic, and that the Postal Service has the resources to meet the challenge of an influx of people voting by mail for the first time due to COVID, President Trump is blocking funding for and smearing the Postal Service. He continues to spread lies about vote by mail suggesting with zero evidence that they’ll cause widespread fraud. And he’s brazenly admitting this is all to hurt Democrats and improve his own chances of reelection.
The truth is that mail-in ballots are secure — they include barcodes and signature matches, leave a paper trail, and — unlike electronic voting machines — paper ballots are not hackable. The President and multiple members of his Administration vote by mail. His attacks on vote by mail are untrue. His attacks on the Postal Service are unconscionable.
Combined, his actions are shocking and a threat to our elections — and our democracy.
By attacking the Postal Service and attempting to thwart safe and secure vote by mail, the president is forcing Americans to risk their health and that of their communities by standing in hours-long lines to cast their rightful vote in November — or not vote at all.
There’s no time to waste in fighting this blatant effort to undermine the election. Slowing mail service in America greatly reduces the amount of time people have to vote. VoteAmerica is working to supercharge our efforts to sign-up millions of citizens to vote by mail NOW and push them to get their ballots in before partisan efforts to destroy the United States Postal Service prevent it. We need your help.
We cannot let DeJoy or the Trump Administration kill the Postal Service. In addition to eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs, further dampening an economy already in distress, it would rob every American — Republican, Democrat, Independent — of an essential lifeline to voting during a national health crisis. We will not stand for that.
Join us in standing up for our Postal Service. Support our work and donate to VoteAmerica today.
Thank you,
Debra Cleaver
Founder & CEO
VoteAmerica.com
