Trump's plan to sabotage the USPS, explained

 

VOX

With the general election just 82 days away and Covid-19 still a major public health risk, Trump is dead-set on preventing as many people as possible from voting by mail this November. [CNN / Ellie Kaufman, Marshall Cohen, Jason Hoffman, and Nicky Robertson]

On Thursday, he told Fox Business that “[Democrats] need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots… But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting.” [Twitter / Abby D. Phillips]

Later, he appeared to walk back his comments a bit, saying, "If they make a deal, the Postal Service is taken care of. All they have to do is make a deal." [Twitter / Sahil Kapur]

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow put it even more transparently on Thursday when he included “voting rights” as part of “really liberal left wishlists” when discussing coronavirus relief negotiations. [Twitter / Don Moynihan]

Both comments reflect what appears to be an increasingly serious strategy on the part of a historically unpopular president — to sabotage the US Postal Service in order to limit voter turnout and improve his chances of winning reelection. [NY Mag / Ed Kilgore]


Trump made strides toward that goal last week, when the new postmaster general — Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor — ousted 23 USPS officials from their jobs as part of a major reorganization. [Washington Post / Jacob Bogage]

Mail-sorting machines are also being removed from at least some USPS facilities, a move that workers have warned could impede their ability to quickly process mail, particularly if they receive a surge of ballots come November. [Vice / Aaron Gordon]

It’s not hard to parse what Trump’s problem with mail-in voting is. He gave away the game as early as March, when he told 
Fox and Friends that Democrats want “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” [Washington Post / Aaron Blake]

That’s not exactly how it works, at least not under normal conditions: As Vox’s David Roberts wrote in May this year, vote-by-mail does increase turnout, but there’s no evidence that it advantages either Republicans or Democrats. [Vox / David Roberts]

But a constant barrage of voter-fraud accusations by Trump and the GOP, as well as the politicization of public health guidance, mean that in November, far more Democrats are likely to vote by mail, whereas Republicans are more likely to vote in person. [Vox / Ian Millhiser]

According to NPR, around 70 percent of the votes cast in the general election could be by mail. That’s good news from a public health perspective, as experts say that voting by mail could well reduce the spread of the coronavirus — but Trump opposes it nonetheless. [NPR / Barbara Sprunt]