How to Rig an Election by Destroying USPS During a Pandemic
By now you might’ve seen several posts and tweets going around telling you to “pay attention to what’s going on with USPS”, so I’m here to echo that while putting together some information about why we need to pay attention.
Again… PAY ATTENTION.
What’s happening with the United States Postal Service (USPS) will have serious short & long term implications in the United States. Please keep reading if you wanna know why.
First, why care so much about the United States Postal Service?
The United States Postal Service (USPS) is an independent federal agency responsible for providing postal service in the United States. Their main purpose is delivering mail to all Americans, not turning a profit. This is crucial. It means USPS must remain committed to providing affordable delivery services to communities in both populous centers and remote or peripheral areas, regardless of whether it’s profitable or not. In fact, private delivery companies frequently rely on USPS for any unprofitable “last miles”.
Aside from that, USPS is one of the country’s biggest employers. Jobs at USPS have played a key role in Black, disabled, and veteran communities as they offer somewhat competitive salaries, guaranteed healthcare, and previously (I’ll get to this soon) a solid amount of overtime compensation (Source, CNN). Given the socioeconomic challenges these sectors of the population already face, and their worsening job prospects in light of the current global pandemic, we should care deeply about protecting USPS.
Ok, so it’s clear why USPS is important. But what are we protecting it from?
Sadly, since the early 2000’s there’s been a concerted effort by Republican & private delivery service lobbyists to defund, destabilize, and privatize USPS (Source, Workers.org).
Note that as a federal agency, USPS is prohibited from lobbying Congress or contributing to campaigns. Yet in 2012, UPS and FedEx alone spent a total of $22.6 million in either lobbying efforts or campaign contributions. This number doesn’t even account for spending by big corporate lobbying firms like ALEC (which both UPS & FedEx are part of).
These lobbyists got dealt a major win when the Bush administration passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) in 2006.
“For years, ALEC worked to influence Congress to pass the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, requiring the USPS to pay $5.5 billion annually for pension health care benefits 75 years in advance. No other agency carries that burden. In 2006, before the PAEA, the USPS profit was $0.9 billion.”
- Joseph Piette in “Who’s pushing post office privatization?” (Source, Workers.org)
In other words, this law makes absolutely no sense unless your goal is specifically to over-burden the agency in order to eventually dismantle and privatize it.
In fact, the financial burden imposed by this law accounts for an estimated 80% to 90% of the agency’s losses before the pandemic (Source, Fortune). However, despite consistent losses year after year, USPS has persisted, in large part because it’s essential for and popular among the US population.
Now, to get to the meat and bones of it all, USPS is back on people’s radar for two main reasons:
- the effects of COVID-19 on delivery related sectors of the economy, and
- the increasing need for mail-in ballots to hold an election in the middle of a global pandemic.
So, reason number #1 to PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH USPS:
Due to COVID-19, mail volume dropped by 1/3rd since last year. Facing $13 billion in losses, USPS’s previous Postmaster General, Megan Brennan, requested a $75 billion stimulus back in April.
Following one of his only consistent patterns over the past four years, Trump yet again squashed the chances of anything good happening in this world and blocked any emergency funding for USPS.
Fast-forward to June 2020, Trump went on to approve a new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, a top donor to Trump and the Republican National Committee (Source, NBC News). This brings us to…
Reason #2 to PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH USPS:
In less than a month, and without consulting any major USPS leadership or union representatives, DeJoy issued a memo effectively ending overtime work and thus radically changing how USPS operates.
Note that “[d]ata obtained by the American Postal Workers Union, which represents about 200,000 postal workers, shows that nearly 20% of all work by mail handlers, city carriers, and postal drivers is done in overtime.” (Source, Fortune)
Overtime work is particularly essential in ensuring mail is delivered on time. “Carriers do not typically leave mail behind, often making multiple trips under heavy loads to get letters and packages to marked recipients as soon as possible.” (Source, Salon.com)
There are currently no plans to hire more USPS employees to make up for the cut in hours and USPS is already stretched thin as approximately 40,000 of their employees (or 8% of their workforce) have had to quarantine for two weeks after exposure to the virus (Source, Fortune). (Note that this fact also speaks to the separate topic of why are we not protecting essential workers better?! But I digress.)
Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, has warned that without extra trips/overtime work, packages and mail will sit at stations for at least an additional day. But as volume continues, a snowball effect will occur where days can grow into weeks. Y’all might have already started to feel some of the effects of the recent change to USPS policy as deliveries are increasingly delayed (especially if you live in rural areas or in US colonies like Puerto Rico).
Advocates of the recent changes to USPS argue that this is the fiscally responsible decision and act like USPS should operate like a private, for-profit business if it hopes to survive.
However, empirical events suggests minimizing mail delivery efforts ultimately increases USPS’s net revenue losses.
So, how does this all connect to the 2020 election?
Well, it’s no secret the US is absolutely tanking its response to the current global pandemic. We’re seeing record highs in COVID-19 cases and deaths and it doesn’t appear like things are going to change or get better any time soon.
This means the safest and most popular way of voting this year will most likely be — you guessed it! — mail-in ballots.
At the moment, thirty-five states currently allow either no-excuse absentee voting or vote entirely by mail. We have very good reason to believe the Postal Service will have to handle more absentee requests and ballots than ever before — and now we know it’ll be during a time when employees are forbidden from working overtime to ensure deliveries arrive on time.
And so here is the kicker: “In 34 states, under current law it’s not enough that your absentee ballot be postmarked by election day. It has to be received by election authorities by election day.” (Source, The Washington Post)
What states are among these 34 states? KEY SWING STATES, including Arizona, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
So, to conclude, the Trump administration is attempting to both systematically end and privatize USPS while also invalidating as many ballots as possible in the 2020 Presidential Elections. “[L]ast month, NPR reported that “at least 65,000 absentee or mail-in ballots have been rejected because they arrived past the deadline, often through no fault of the voter.” (Source)
Y’all read that?! THOUSANDS of ballots might go uncounted because of the new measures being implemented by Trump’s administration.
That’s why it’s more important than ever to VOTE and VOTE EARLY. The US Postal Service is specifically asking us to expect 14 day round trips for mail-in ballots, so election day is no longer November 3, 2020. ELECTION DAY IS NOW OCTOBER 20. Get your votes in!
Lastly, stay informed on the specifics regarding everything Trump is doing to try and rig the elections in his favor. We need to have the courage to stand up against this. This is not what a democracy looks like.
There is absolutely no reason to acquiesce to fraudulent elections.
Somos más. No tengamos miedo.
We are more. We should not be the ones in fear.
