Turner questions the Postal Service’s refusal to display voter registration materials in city
Mayor Sylvester Turner on Tuesday asked Houston’s postmaster to explain why officials at more than a dozen of the city’s 86 post offices have declined to accept multilingual voter registration materials from volunteers with the nonpartisan League of Women Voters.
In a sharply worded letter to postmaster Corey Richards, Turner also requested a copy of an apparent memo that said the materials violate U.S. Postal Service policy, according to some postal workers. U.S. Reps. Sylvia Garcia and Al Green, both Houston Democrats, first raised the issue last week after touring the North Houston USPS Processing & Distribution Center.
The voter registration materials also included reminders about key voting deadlines, according to League of Women Voters volunteers, who successfully placed the materials at most Houston post offices. Postal workers at post offices in Alief, Ashford West, Cornerstone, Eastwood, Fleetwood, Foster Place, Galleria, Long Point, Oak Forest, Spring and Westbury said they could not display the voter registration cards and other materials.
“As the Mayor of the fourth largest city in the United States, I want to know why,” Turner wrote.
Toward the end of the letter, which is dated Sept. 2 but was sent Tuesday, Turner quoted former U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon who died in July.
“Lewis is famous for saying, ‘If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it,’” Turner wrote. “I encourage you do something about it, and do it now.”
Garcia said she was told the Postal Service’s legal counsel advised the ban on displaying voter registration cards. A Postal Service spokeswoman previously said the agency “has not changed its policies on voter registration activities or displaying voter registration information in lobbies.”
Voter registration drives are permitted in postal facilities under certain circumstances, but workers are prohibited from accepting or displaying “unattended stacks or boxes of forms or other materials,” the USPS spokeswoman said.
Kanickewa “Nikki” Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Postal Service, said agency officials “are
aware of the letter and appreciate the concerns expressed.” She reiterated, however, that USPS rules prohibit “depositing literature” on Postal Service premises.
The Postal Service’s role in the 2020 election became an explosive story last month after the Trump administration implemented a number of sweeping operational changes that agency officials warned would restrict their ability to deliver mail ballots on time.
President Donald Trump said he opposed Democrats’ efforts to secure emergency funding for the Postal Service because he hoped to limit the agency’s ability to handle mail ballots. Trump has said the anticipated uptick in mail voting during the COVID-19 pandemic will produce widespread voter fraud, though studies and nonpartisan experts have found that voter fraud is extremely rare.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor who began running the Postal Service in May, announced last month the agency would suspend its costcutting moves until after the election.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, meanwhile, announced plans Tuesday to investigate DeJoy over a report by the Washington Post that he pressured employees at his former business to contribute to Republican candidates before later awarding them bonuses as reimbursement. DeJoy has said through a spokeswoman he “believes that he has always followed campaign fundraising laws and regulations.”
During their tour of the Postal Service center last week, Garcia and Green raised concerns over 12 sorting machines that had been shut down, including a universal sorter that handles thousands of packages per hour. The Houston Democrats said local USPS officials promised at least one of the shuttered machines would be replaced by mid-October.