U.S. postal chief ‘confident’ service can handle surge in mail ballots.
WASHINGTON — Louis DeJoy, the embattled postmaster general whose cost-cutting and operational changes have prompted widespread concern about mailin voting, said Friday he was “extremely highly confident” the Postal Service could handle the largest vote-by-mail program in American history. He said it was “outrageous” for Democrats to suggest that he might intentionally slow ballot delivery to help President Donald Trump.
Testifying before Congress for the first time amid a sharp backlash, DeJoy, a major donor to Trump, defended many of the changes as necessary to help the Postal Service get its financial house in order. He acknowledged that the moves have slowed some mail delivery and reiterated that he would suspend his cost-cutting measures until after the election.
“There has been no changes to any policies with regard to election mail,” DeJoy told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, adding, “The Postal Service is fully capable and committed to delivering the nation’s election mail fully and on time.”
Under intense pressure from Democrats, however, he refused to reverse other steps, like removing hundreds of blue mailboxes and mail sorting machines, that he said his predecessors had initiated in response to a steady decline in mail volume. He told senators that he did not know when the machine removal began, saying it was “not a critical issue within the Postal Service.”
And he was unable to offer many specifics about how the Postal Service would ensure ontime delivery of ballots this fall, telling Sen. Maggie Hassan, DN.H., that he would be unable to provide a detailed plan by Sunday because it was still being drafted.
DeJoy said he would continue the agency’s practice of prioritizing election mail, regardless of what postage is used, and “deploy processes and procedures that advance any election mail, in some cases ahead of first-class mail.”
As DeJoy testified Friday, a coalition of six states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against him, the Postal Service and the chair of its board of governors, Robert M. Duncan. The attorneys general assert that DeJoy’s recent changes have resulted in widespread delays that could have a disastrous effect for voting by mail this November. His recent announcement, suspending many new initiatives, did not address several of his measures, the states claim.
Concerns about the ability of Americans to vote by mail during a pandemic have been heightened by Trump, who has criticized the Postal Service as a “joke” and renewed his attack on mail-in voting hours after DeJoy finished assuring lawmakers that the process was the Postal Service’s No. 1 priority.
“You’ll have double voting — where they send in a ballot, then they’ll go and vote,” Trump said in remarks to a conservative group of supporters in Virginia. “That’s going to be a big problem. They’ll send in their ballot and they’ll vote, too. They’ll send in the ballot. What are the chances that some states so efficiently run — ‘Oh, gee, you can’t vote, we just got your ballot last night at seven o’clock.’ I mean think of how ridiculous it is, right? Common sense.”
DeJoy said he had “never spoken to the president about the Postal Service, other than to congratulate me when I accepted the position.”
But he did not back down from his plans to radically overhaul the beleaguered Postal Service, saying he foresees “dramatic” changes after the election in November, including rate increases and new service standards in rural America, as ways to cut costs.