As President Trump ramps up his unfounded attacks on mail balloting as being susceptible to widespread fraud, postal employees and union officials say the changes implemented by Trump fundraiser-turned-postmaster general Louis DeJoy are contributing to a growing perception that mail delays are the result of a political effort to undermine absentee voting.
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DeJoy, a North Carolina logistics executive who
donated more than $2 million to GOP political committees in the past four years, approved
changes that took effect July 13 that the agency said were aimed at cutting costs for the debt-laden mail service. They included prohibiting overtime pay, shutting down sorting machines early and requiring letter carriers to leave mail behind when necessary to avoid extra trips or late delivery on routes.
The new policies have resulted in at least a two-day delay in scattered parts of the country, even for express mail, according to multiple postal workers and union leaders. Letter carriers are manually sorting more mail, adding to the delivery time. Bins of mail ready for delivery are sitting in post offices because of scheduling and route changes. And without the ability to work overtime, workers say the logjam is worsening without an end in sight.
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In Michigan, which is gearing up for its Aug. 4 primary, election administrators said they have fielded complaints from voters who had not yet received their ballots as of this week. Election clerks are advising voters to drop off their ballot Tuesday rather than sending it back via mail, out of fear that the ballots will not be returned in time to be counted.
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Among the changes is a new, strict cutoff time in the morning for mail carriers to pick up items to deliver that day, several postal employees from three different states said.
The machines that typically sort mail and prepare them for pickup by carriers are being shut down earlier in some areas to cut costs, requiring carriers to sort more mail by hand once they arrive in the morning.
That means any mail that is not ready by cutoff time waits at least another day. And if there is any error in hand-sorted mail, it needs to be rerouted to another carrier — which could lead to three to four extra days of waiting. As a result of these changes, guaranteed shipping dates are not being met, the employees said.
“This is forced. These are things that don’t have to happen,” one worker from Pennsylvania said.
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The mail delay comes as election officials across the country are struggling to process a crush of absentee ballots driven by the pandemic.
A delay in delivering ballots to voters and then returning them to election officials could cause people to be disenfranchised — especially in states that require ballots to be returned by Election Day, voting rights experts warn.
Already, tens of thousands of ballots across the country have been
disqualified in this year’s primaries, many because they did not arrive in time.
