An unholy alliance to destroy vote by mail >>

While competitors like UPS and FedEx are eligible for bailouts, the USPS has been left out to dry by our government.

Tell Congress: "Repeal the Postal Act of 2006, which is bankrupting the US Postal Service! Trump's crony Postmaster General will use any budget shortfalls as an excuse to destroy the Postal Service and make it impossible to reliably vote by mail!" ADD YOUR NAME Friend, The US Postal Service released a terrifying new memo1 this week―terrifying not just because the USPS is a crown jewel of American logistics and ingenuity, but because we're going to need it to hold a fair election during the pandemic. The USPS is using a 2006 law that required it to pre-fund 75 years of pensions as an excuse to make massive budget cuts during the pandemic. While competitors like UPS and FedEx are eligible for bailouts, the USPS has been left out to dry by our government. Tell Congress: Repeal the law that's bankrupting USPS, and ensure we can safely vote by mail this November! Trump's new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, was a major donor to Trump's 2016 campaign. And the changes he's suggesting in his memo don't just harm services Americans depend on, but they directly target vote by mail restrictions. How? Most states have regulations around postmarking to validate ballots. For example, ballots postmarked up until election day must be counted. But with these new postal regulations, a large number of last-day ballots could reach the post office on time, but be disqualified because the post office never marked it. Something like this appears to have happened in Brooklyn, where a single post office didn't mark ANY of the ballots, leading to as many as 1 in 5 mail ballots due to postal error, not voter error. As Ryan Grim wrote in the Intercept:2 If a major Brooklyn post office was not postmarking ballots, that means voters who cast legitimate, timely ballots won't have theirs count through no fault of their own. Invalidating a ballot because it has no signature may do a disservice to democracy, but at least the rule is applied uniformly across the city. Punishing a borough because of its post office is a different matter, and could serve as de facto suppression of minority votes. A deliberately malfunctioning Postal Service and a pandemic that forces Americans to vote by mail is a disaster for democracy. We need to stop it. Tell Congress: Repeal the law that's bankrupting USPS, and ensure we can safely vote by mail this November! Thanks, Mike Phelan Progress America 1 https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/14/postal-service-trump-dejoy-delay-mail/ 2 https://theintercept.com/2020/07/16/new-york-mail-in-ballots-thrown-out/ DONATE NOW Sent via ActionNetwork.org. To update your email address, change your name or address, or to stop receiving emails from Progress America, please click here.