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USPS backs off cuts

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Illinois

* Capitol News Illinois…

Operational shifts undertaken by the United States Postal Service in recent weeks, including spending cuts and equipment removal, are illegal, Illinois’ top lawyer and 13 other attorneys general argued in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.

By terminating workers’ overtime, eliminating a number of mail sorting machines, removing several mailboxes and rescheduling the delivery of some late-day mail, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is subverting the national election this year, the officials added. […]

Before the Postal Service is allowed to implement procedural changes that affect all Americans, officials must submit them for approval to the Postal Regulatory Commission, according to the lawsuit. That panel then accepts public feedback and makes a determination.

DeJoy did not do that, the attorneys general assert, thus operating outside the scope of his power. The lawyers are asking a federal judge to prevent the nation’s mail delivery agency from reducing services and to force DeJoy to undo all other recent changes.

This has been a huge national news story for the past several days. The union representing workers did a remarkable job of getting the word out as its members’ overtime hours were being cut and the president raged at the USPS. From yesterday…

Mayor Lori Lightfoot cast President Donald Trump and Republicans as “enemies of democracy” who are mounting a “full-out assault” on the integrity of the November election by undermining the U.S. Postal Service and making it more difficult for people to vote by mail amid a pandemic.

Last week…

Gov. JB Pritzker commented on President Donald Trump addressing issues with the United States Postal Service.

Trump said he opposes funding for the service because he doesn’t want to see it used for mail-in voting.

The governor countered Trump, reiterating that the state of Illinois is expanding mail-in voting and they are doing everything they can to make sure everyone gets the chance to cast their vote in the presidential election.

“This president appears to do anything to try to win the reelection, including taking away people’s voting rights in the midst of a pandemic,” Pritzker said. “We need to have mail-in voting available to everybody. We need the postal service to work like it has for the entire history of our country.”

* So far, I’ve heard zero complaints about any issues from campaigns about direct mail. And I’ve heard nothing yet from any county clerks about particular USPS issues. Indeed, when the Champaign County Clerk goofed (for the umpteenth time now) and printed the wrong Zip Code on return envelopes for vote by mail applications, the local postmaster said it was no big deal and the mail would be delivered. Also, Jack Shafer had a really good piece this week about how much of this was overblown…

It’s true that the USPS has sent letters to 46 states expressing its doubts about delivering all the ballots in time to be counted. But, as the Washingtonn Post also mentioned in its story, those letters were in the works before Trump’s new postmaster general took office. It’s also true the USPS needs billions of dollars from Congress, which Trump made noise about vetoing. But that has little to do with delivering ballots for the election, as he implied on Fox. It’s Trump’s particular genius for pulling together unrelated things that has liberals and election wonks in a tizzy. […]

The USPS’s capacity to deliver mail is immense, at an average of 472 million mailpieces a day. If every voter of the 138 million who voted in 2016 posted his ballot on the same day this year, that would compose only 30 percent of a normal day’s delivery. And that surge won’t happen; every voter casting a ballot outside his local polling precinct isn’t going to use USPS and not every voter who does is going to mail his ballot on the same day. […]

What about those vanishing USPS mail collection boxes? As it turns out, the USPS has been culling the boxes since 2000, when their numbers peaked and 365,000 of them stood sentinel on U.S. streets. Today, their numbers have dwindled to 142,000. Why has the USPS deleted them? Because the volume of first-class has nose-dived. In 2010, the USPS delivered 77.6 billion pieces of first-class mail, but by 2019 that number was 54.9 billion. Reduced volume makes it cost-inefficient to collect from so many scantly used boxes, so USPS has done the logical thing and removed them. (That’s why the USPS removed those mail-processing machines, too.) […]

Another thing to remember is Trump’s propensity for making big threats and then retreating. After he fed his base a slaughterhouse-sized meal of red meat by claiming he was going to impede voting by withholding billions of dollars from the USPS, he quickly reversed himself and said he won’t veto relief legislation just because it will fund the Postal Service. By Monday afternoon, he was tweeting “SAVE THE POST OFFICE!”

* Even so, the pressure seems to have worked…

The U.S. Postal Service will halt its controversial cost-cutting initiatives until after the election — canceling service reductions, reinstating overtime hours and ceasing the removal of mail-sorting machines and public collection boxes, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced in a statement Tuesday.

The declaration comes as lawmakers prepared to question DeJoy and USPS board of governors Chairman Robert M. Duncan in a Friday hearing in the Senate and at a Monday hearing in the House on those policy changes, which have caused mail slowdowns and threatened to jeopardize ballot collection during the November election.

DeJoy, a former logistics executive and ally of President Trump, took office in June and swiftly made organizational changes to the nation’s mail service, cracking down on overtime hours and banning extra trips by postal carriers trying to ensure on-time mail delivery. The result was mail delays in localities across the country that ensnared prescription medications and election mail during some mid-summer primaries.

The Postal Service also planned to take 671 mail-sorting machines, roughly 10 percent of its inventory, offline to cut costs, and had in recent days removed, relocated and replaced public mailboxes in a number of states including Oregon, Pennsylvania, California, Ohio, Montana and Arizona, among others.

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 3:14 pm

Comments

“ceasing the removal of mail-sorting machines” and “replacing the removed machines are different things. Are the machines taken gone for good or coming back? Sounds like those machines did a lot of sorting.

Comment by Kippax Blue Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 3:28 pm
This is part of a larger problem, which is the attempt to de-legitimize this election. Those who plan to vote by mail overwhelmingly support Biden. The television networks will report returns on election night only of those voting on election day. Waiting for mailed ballots to be counted will give plenty of fuel to the rhetorical fire that somehow Trump is the victim of election fraud, when the opposite is actually the case.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: we need to know who the election authorities are in every state and what their process will be for ensuring safe handling and proper counting of ballots. The chance for chaos on election night is high, so being armed with the right information to keep tabs on this will be critical to sorting it out.

Already there are stories of people who no longer trust mailed ballots. If there is one thing all sides can and should agree on, it’s that elections are too important to be threatened in any way. Democrats and Republicans both have a stake in ensuring fair elections and a transparent process. Our democracy depends on nothing less.

Comment by 47th Ward Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 3:39 pm
When your administration is an Epic Fail and your party’s plans to run the government repeatedly hurt America and most citizens, cheating is your only option to stay in office. Neither Trump nor his backiers nor his voters want a fair election. They want to keep control of the levers of power. They need power to continue the looting of America.

Comment by Froganon Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 3:50 pm
The president is a master of distraction.
I wonder he’s dreaming up next…….challenging ballot signatures, challenging ballot postmarks, fake drop boxes, fake ballots, etc., etc.

Comment by TinyDancer(FKASue) Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 4:09 pm
Mr DEJOY should be the second person run out of Washington on January 20 at 12:01 PM

Comment by Big Mike Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 4:17 pm
You cannot run government like a business. I sincerely wish people understood this better. Government isn’t designed to maximize profit. It is designed to serve people. The sooner elected officials understand that and that you have to follow the process, the better.

Comment by Fixer Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 4:25 pm
==You cannot run government like a business.==

But you can charge $1 to mail a letter if that’s what it really costs.

Comment by City Zen Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 4:42 pm
What happens where Nero, err Trump, loses? Between November 3rd and January 20th, a caged demagogue can do a lot of damage, and not only to the post office. And that’s assuming he agrees to leave on the 20th.

Comment by PublicServant Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 4:43 pm
city zen
Congress passed a law prohibiting that

Comment by very old soil Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 4:47 pm
==But you can charge $1 to mail a letter if that’s what it really costs. ==

Not if it prevents large segments of the country from sending or receiving letters. The point of the postal service, from its inception, is to tie the country together. That’s why it can’t be run like a business. Nation and commerce are different things.

Comment by Socially DIstant Watcher Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 4:50 pm
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/08/18/susan-collins-engineered-the-usps-disaster-shes-now-protesting/

Comment by very old soil Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 4:50 pm
Thanks for the drive by CZ. Added so much to the discussion.

Comment by Fixer Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 5:53 pm
I heard the AG of Massachusetts, who spearheaded the federal lawsuit, speaking earlier today - glad to learn that AG Raoul is among the 14 AGs involved.

There are both short-term and long-term objectives involved here. As others have noted, the short-term goal is to cast doubt on the mail-in voting process (and slow it down, perhaps to the point where in some states mail-in ballots don’t arrive by the state’s deadline for receipt).

The President, who of course votes by mail (couldn’t there be an exception for banned punctuation on occasion?),seeks to create havoc wherever he can - that’s one thing.

But the longer-term objective is to weaken the USPS service irreparably and eventually, to privatize it; that’s why DeJoy was brought in, and it looks like he’s been busy carrying out his mission the last few weeks since taking over as PG.

It’s unclear to me why this Administration thinks a Constitutionally-guaranteed service by the Federal Government can be privatized, but that’s how this Administration rolls, sigh.

The USPS’ financial woes are largely due to a 2006 law requiring them to front-load pensions for 75 years within a decade, cost $110 billion. This has resulted in accumulated shortfalls over the past 15 years. The money was stipulated to be set aside, but it’s being used as a Congressional cookie jar.

It looks like the immediate crisis may be averted, but the pension issue deserves research and longer-term activism.

Comment by dbk Tuesday, Aug 18, 20 @ 9:06 pm
And that’s assuming he agrees to leave on the 20th.

that would be fun to see him get arrested for tresspassing

Comment by foster brooks Wednesday, Aug 19, 20 @ 9:35 am