Post Office Warns 46 States It Can’t Guarantee Mail-In Ballots Will Meet Voting Deadlines: Report
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The U.S. Postal Service has reportedly sent letters to 46 states warning their election officials that it might not be able to deliver the crush of mail-in ballots in time for them to be meet voting deadlines.
According to reporting in the Washington Post, the Post Office is anticipating up to tens of millions of mailed and absentee ballots this fall just as a new Trump appointed-director has begun a sweeping re-organization of the service.
The ballot warnings, issued at the end of July from Thomas J. Marshall, general counsel and executive vice president of the Postal Service, and obtained through a records request by The Washington Post, were planned before the appointment of Louis DeJoy, a former logistics executive and ally of President Trump, as postmaster general in early summer. They go beyond the traditional coordination between the Postal Service and election officials, drafted as fears surrounding the coronavirus pandemic triggered an unprecedented and sudden shift to mail-in voting.
Among the states receiving warnings from the Post Office were the key swing states of Michigan, Florida, and Pennsylvania. A recent Monmouth poll found 58% of Americans support expanding mail-in voting amid the pandemic. Notably, the five states that already mandate 100% mail-in voting—Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington—were not among the states warned by the Postal Service.
“Nearly all Democrats (90%) say expanding vote-by-mail is a good idea but few Republicans (20%) agree,” the poll reports. “Six in ten (60%) independents say it is a good idea. Nearly half of all voters report they are either very (32%) or somewhat (17%) likely to cast their own general election ballot by mail.”
Congressional Democrats as well as Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden have raised alarms over recent comments by President Donald Trump—who has falsely claimed mailed ballots are rife with fraud—that suggested he would block any additional funding for the Post Office to handle the higher volume of mailed ballots so Democrats “can’t have universal mail-in voting.” Trump later walked back that threat in a testy exchange with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins at a Thursday White House press conference.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy declined to be interviewed by the Post for the story.
