Mail good enough for IRS; why not voting?

The 2020 Election will be a fraudulent mess. Will maybe never know who won! — President Donald Trump on Twitter on Saturday.

With Universal Mail-in Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote??? — President Trump on Twitter, July 30

While the president said on Saturday that universal mail-in voting would “make our country a laughing stock all over the world,” the worst foul-up inflicted upon most of us by the USPS is inadvertently receiving a letter in our mailbox that was meant for the Joneses, which we then have to walk across the street.

This is the service, after all, that provides a vital and reliable lifeline in rural communities across Ohio. This is the service that we entrust with the safe delivery of our Christmas greetings, wedding invitations, and sympathy cards.

Trump has been predicting widespread mail fraud for months now, even as members of his own party shoot down his accusations.

“I can tell you that’s not the case in Ohio,” Frank Larose, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, said earlier this year. “As I’ve said, we’re fortunate that we’ve been doing vote-by-mail for a long time. We know how to do it, and we know how to get it done securely.”

If that’s not good enough for you, remember who else puts their trust in the postal service:

• The Internal Revenue Service, which certainly knows how to find taxpayers.

“The IRS initiates most contacts with taxpayers through regular mail delivered by the U.S. Postal Service,” the IRS website reads. “However, there are special circumstances in which the IRS will call or come to a home or business ... Even then, taxpayers will generally first receive a letter or sometimes more than one letter, often called notices, from the IRS in the mail.”

• Ohio’s courts, which warn potential jurors of telephone phishing scams meant to entice victims into giving up personal information.

“IMPORTANT!!!” reads one such warning, on the Franklin County Common Pleas website. “No employee from the Sheriff’s office or Court will ever contact potential jurors by phone and would never, under any circumstances, request your personal or financial information. If you are called to jury duty, you will receive an official jury summons in the mail.”

• The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles. “Your new driver license or identification card will be mailed in a plain, white envelope. To monitor and track your mail, the U.S. Postal Service offers a free service called Informed Delivery.“

• The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which relies upon the postal service for its Meds by Mail program, “a safe, easy and convenient way for your non-urgent, maintenance medications to be delivered directly to your home with no cost share or annual deductible!”

• And finally, the State of New York, which in 1947 declared Kris Kringle to be Santa Claus after the postal service delivered to him hundreds of letters that had been addressed to the one and only Santa.

“Your Honor, every one of these letters is addressed to Santa Claus,” said Kringle’s defense attorney, Fred Gailey, in his winning argument before Judge Henry X. Harper. “The Post Office has delivered them. Therefore, the Post Office, a branch of the federal government, recognizes this man, Kris Kringle, to be the one-and-only Santa Claus!”

Yes, that last one is fiction. But so is the narrative of widespread mailin voter fraud being touted by the president. tdecker@dispatch.com @Theodore_decker