Postal chief delays changes
Move fails to halt Democrats’ fight on mail services
When the politically connected head of the U.S. Postal Service agreed Tuesday to delay any service cuts until after the Nov. 3 election, Democrats won a battle. But the political war with President Trump over mail ballots continues.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a GOP donor appointed to the job in May, bowed to a firestorm of criticism and backed off efforts to close mail processing facilities, cut overtime and pull many of the blue mailboxes from street corners across the country.
“To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded,” he said in a statement.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wasn’t conciliatory when she was asked about DeJoy’s decision at a news conference on the noisy street outside the Bayview post office in San Francis
co.
“I don’t, frankly, trust the postmaster general,” she said. “If he’s sincere about it, it means the bully has backed off.”
In a statement later in the day, Pelosi said the action “may be a temporary pause in operational changes delaying the mail.” The speaker called it “a necessary but insufficient step in ending the president’s election sabotage campaign.”
It doesn’t do enough to “ensure voters will not be disenfranchised by the president this fall,” she said.
Pelosi’s news conference was one of more than 60 held Tuesday by Democrats focused on what the speaker charged were efforts by Trump and DeJoy to slow mail delivery in an effort to cut the use of mail ballots in November.
Concerns about having DeJoy in charge of the Postal Service have existed since his appointment, especially after it was revealed that since 2016 the businessman has given $1.2 million to Trump’s campaign and millions more to other GOP causes.
Almost immediately, his calls for more efficiency — and cutting costs — in postal operations were fought by the mostly unionized work force, which complained that the results would be slower mail delivery, now and through the election.
In a Fox News interview last week, Trump was unconcerned. He said he was opposed to providing the Postal Service with the $25 billion that Democrats — and the service’s Board of Governors — had requested in coronavirus stimulus aid because it would be used to help deal with the flood of mail ballots expected in November from people worried about voting in person.
“They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said. “If they don’t get (the money), that means you can’t have universal mailin voting because they’re not equipped to handle it.”
The president later tried to back away from his statement and suggest he might approve the money if House Democrats agreed to some of his other demands. But Trump has been adamant that a boost in the number of mail ballots means more vote fraud, although there is no evidence to show that.
Speaking on “Fox and Friends” Monday, the president said that if universal mail voting is allowed, “you’re never going to have a fair election.”
Trump’s words have changed what was largely a battle between his appointees and labor unions about how the post offices should be run, said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UC Irvine law school.
“It is unclear whether and the extent to which these changes are being made to make it harder for people to vote by mail during the pandemic,” he said in an email. “But President Trump’s statements tying the two issues together are very troubling.”
Any delivery delays could cause problems to some states, especially those unused to large numbers of mail ballots.
“Some states have rules that allow voters to request absentee ballots very shortly before the election,” Hasen said. “These deadlines are unrealistic and may end up disenfranchising voters not because of suppression but because of unrealistic expectations about the post office.”
California voters are in a much better position than those in many other states. In the March primary, 72% of the ballots were cast by mail, and the percentage has risen with almost every election. While officials are expecting even more mail ballots in November, the state has experience in dealing with them.
Post office delays also won’t have a chilling effect in California. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Gavin
Newsom signed a bill in June that not only sends a mail ballot to every active voter in the state, but also allows ballots to be counted if they arrive within 17 days of the election, as long as they are postmarked by election day.
Even so, Secretary of State Alex Padilla joined the call for an end to any mail delays.
“The health, safety and voting rights of more than 25 million citizens in California depend on the effective and efficient processing and the delivery of the mail,” he said in a letter to DeJoy last week. “Voters expect and deserve to receive their votebymail ballots without delay, regardless of whether they live in rural, urban, suburban or tribal areas.”
On Tuesday, state Attorney General Xavier Becerra said he would join a nationwide lawsuit over the changes DeJoy now says he will suspend.
“Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy,” Becerra said in a statement. “That means relying on our Postal Service more than ever during this pandemic.”
Pelosi has called the House back from its August recess for a vote Saturday on a bill that would bar the Postal Service from changing the operations or level of service it had in place on Jan.1, as well as provide $25 billion in funding. DeJoy also is scheduled to appear before a House committee on Monday.
The bill is designed as a bipartisan measure, Pelosi said at her news conference, without any additions that don’t pertain to the Postal Service.
“We wanted to make it easy for Republicans to vote for it,” she said. San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Alexei Koseff contributed to this report.