Post Office Louis DeJoy has outraged the country in recent days with cost-cutting measures that he said are aimed at improving the finances of the postal service, even at the expense of mail delivery times. And with Election Day fast approaching and local and national governments expect a record number of ballots to be sent by mail, USPS shenanigans may end up having an effect on the vote count itself.
However, the avalanche of reports in recent days has been relentless, and it is difficult to distinguish potentially significant obstacles to voting rights from what might otherwise be typical USPS operations.
While DeJoy is in a position to testify before the Senate Committee on Government Affairs and National Security on Friday, and back to the House Oversight Committee on Monday, here’s a look at what voter mail really can be and what we learned about it in the last week. :
Reports that USPS painters were told that they would no longer be allowed to paint overtime, and that therefore mail would be left if it was not processed in time for the expected departure of the postmen, were sounding early alarms for election experts, who were heavily tracking the postal service after the departure this spring of the executives with which they had engaged in close relationships.
Adding only one day to the time it took for a poll to succeed a voter or return to an election official can result in the rejection of thousands of polls in November. Trends in the rejection of the spring and summer primaries have shown that thousands of polls are no longer returned to election officials in time to be counted as pandemics, i.e. in states where the delight of mail voting was limited.
Veteran election directors told the TPM that they had come to expect a practical technique from their local postal partners, who took them to USPS services to help them monitor the sometimes uninterrupted paintings of returning ballots to polling stations.
The USPS headquarters first downplayed the concept that there had been a replacement in the overtime policy and stated that mail personnel commands received through the Washington Post, the TPM and others were not an official national document. But DeJoy has since stated that longer delivery times were the result of the cost reduction it sought to make to the agency.
His statement this week that he would put his “initiatives” on hold until the end of the election did not absolutely explain the problem, as it implied that nothing had been replaced in overtime policy and that overtime was “approved as needed.” “This has left election fans in doubt about the cases in which overtime will be allowed. They must be sure that the delivery of the electoral mail will be exempt from any overtime restrictions.”
Amid developmental considerations on reductions, USPS sent letters to 46 states (although some say they did not obtain them) warning them that their delays in the absentee voting procedure were not aligned with USPS delivery standards.
To be fair to USPS, for years, election experts had warned states to exceed their votes to apply for and receive ballots. But many of these states had only a very small percentage of their electorate voting by mail anyway, at least until the pandemic, when mail voting exploded.
However, when combined with overtime reductions, the USPS’ new approach to the possibility that ballots may not succeed in election officials on time has led many mail-in voting experts to wonder whether those warnings meant that the USPS was abandoning a long-standing technique to do everything in their power to deliver ballotsArray even if that means running tirelessly in the days leading up to a Choice. It was not transparent if the warnings were sent as a general precaution, as the pandemic increased the use of vote by mail, or if they reflected the effect of DeJoy’s broader cost-cutting policies on ballot delivery.
A mail-in voting expert warned that letters may simply be a “CYA” move, so if new policies that delay ballot delivery times are delayed, the USPS may simply blame election officials for hearing their recommendation to delay their deadlines.
At the very least, it was unlikely that top election officials would be able to heed USPS’s time-limit warnings, which are set across state legislatures (and many legislatures do not intend to meet in time to solve the problem).
The heist warnings were similar to the wobbly postage factor.
For years, experienced postal managers have used a less expensive marketing fee, which, combined with other discounts, reduces the postage according to the survey to 20 cents of the first-class rate of 55 cents. Mail with marketing fees is technically a slower delivery class, however, veteran mailing managers have long understood that USPS staff give all surveys a priority treatment, similar to first-class, even when mailed at a less expensive rate. Election officials, new to large-scale mail voting, have also sought to adopt this tactic of reducing charges, as the budgets of state and local governments have already stretched out during the pandemic.
But in USPS state letters and other directives, the firm involved a “get what you pay” technique to deliver the ballots, emphasizing that election officials don’t expect faster delivery times than the USPS general criteria say.
This obvious replacement in the message began before DeJoy officially assumed as Minister of Post Office. But the lack of transparency about what motivates new warnings to states has caused panic. And DeJoy echoed the rhetoric while promised not to slow down the mail.
In any case, the load factor is genuine, even if there were smart intentions, the USPS warning objected to marketing fees. Even officials in established mail order states, where response time is not as tight, say that, due to USPS warnings, they will most likely have to spend more to improve at least some of their first-class survey deliveries.
Viral images of mailboxes on the back of USPS trucks have caused panic in recent days, and commentators (and TPM emails) fear that DeJoy is looking to remove an approach to returning ballots by mail. USPS spokesmen told the media, and added TPM, that the changes are a component of normal maintenance and the overall movement of low-traffic delivery boxes to high-traffic areas.
DeJoy said Tuesday, after many negative reactions, that “blue collection boxes will remain where they are,” however, that did not address the destination of mailboxes that have already been moved or removed from the streets. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Wednesday after the assembly with DeJoy that she has no plans to update mailboxes that have been removed.
In committee, David C. Williams, a former member of the Board of Governors of Postal Services, told lawmakers Thursday that the removal of blue boxes “was not a component of existing plans, as far as I know” when he resigned last April.
“Indeed, ” he continued, “Secretary Mnuchin sought this to happen. His examination of the postal service asked for this to be done. I asked the postal service about it and they told me there would be no explanation for why.”
“I don’t know how it went from that to this several weeks ago, where they’re uprooted everywhere,” Willams added.
Some context is needed: At most, other people who vote by mail return their ballots to the user or in a different way use their own mailboxes to send outgoing mail, according to Tammy Patrick, senior advisor to the Democracy Fund. And it is conceivable that, given the sharp decrease in the volume of mail related to COVID-19, the boxes moved legitimately.
But, he said, the postal service did not percentize traffic knowledge about movements and time is worrying. “The ballots are sent within a month to every state,” he said. “It’s incredibly problematic that there are so many adjustments so close to an election cycle.”
News of the removal of sorting machines from mail processing centers offered, at least in connection with the blue box panic, a more measurable story: according to the Washington Post, which cited a union complaint from postal workers, USPS planned to dismantle 671 types of mail. machines: about 10% of your total inventory. The machines, which classify letters of orders of magnitude faster than humans, would possibly have been used less in recent months due to the overall decrease in mail (rather than packages) that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic.
– Heather Walker (@_HeatherWalker) August 19, 2020
Is it vital for mail? Or are the remaining machines sufficient to cover the expected call to sort the election by mail? The resolution of dismantling the machines may be valid and without malicious intent, but experts told TPM that the usPS’s lack of transparent communication and justification sounded the alarm. As former Deputy Director General Ron Stroman told the press on Tuesday: “Partly because of the lack of transparency, we just don’t know. There was no clarity about what happened with regard to mail processing equipment.”
This is a slightly more recent challenge than the others on this list, however, the ability of postal staff to act as witnesses to the electorate by mail can have a significant effect in some areas, especially in remote places where there are simply no other people around you. serve as witnesses.
The Anchorage Daily News made its first report on the obvious replacement of the rule this week, after the state electorate complained that, unlike other election years, postal staff had told them that they were prohibited from acting as witnesses even though state law identified them as “authorized officials. “with that authority.
A USPS official, responding to a consultation from the director of Alaska’s Elections Division, Gail Fenumiai, stated that postal workers “cannot serve as witnesses in their official capacity while on duty, in a component due to potential operational impacts. But, the spokesman added, “the postal service does not prohibit a worker from testifying in a non-public capacity outside of working hours, if desired.” Correspondence received through the Anchorage Daily News.
It didn’t make things very clear. Nor did the USPS spokesman who told the Daily News: “I sense this is a national thing that has been broadcast. It’s not just Alaska.”
TPM has contacted the U.S. Postal Service for feedback and we will update this article if we have a response. It is attractive to note that in some states during this election cycle, the electorate will be allowed to completely forget the requirement of witnesses for ballots by mail, given the exclusive cases presented through COVID-19.
Cristina Cabrera contributed to the report.