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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leaders on Saturday discussed whether to reconvene the House, which is currently on hold, to deal with the postal service crisis. Pelosi and Representative Carolyn Maloney (DN.Y.), Chair of the Oversight and Reform Committee, on Sunday invited Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Postal Service Board Chairman Robert Duncan to testify at the a hearing next Monday. .
“The hearing will examine large-scale operational and organizational changes within the Postal Service that experts believe could degrade delivery standards, slow mail and potentially undermine the rights of Americans eligible to vote by mail in future. November elections, “they said. in a report. “The Postmaster General and senior postal service executives must answer Congress and the American people for their reasons for pushing these dangerous new policies that threaten to silence the voices of millions of people just months before the election. “
Trump has claimed without evidence that universal postal voting will lead to widespread electoral fraud – fear-mongering rhetoric that comes as he follows former Vice President Joe Biden in several national and state battlefield polls. There is no evidence of widespread electoral fraud, although White House chief of staff Mark Meadows retorted on Sunday that “there is no evidence that there is not either . ” Only nine states have universal postal voting.
Even in an active pandemic that has infected 5.3 million Americans and killed more than 169,000 people in the United States, 80% of registered voters who support or lean to support Trump prefer to vote in person, according to a Pew research center. survey. Almost 60% of voters who support or lean to support Biden would prefer to vote by mail.
The pandemic has also disproportionately affected people of color, many of whom vote Democrats rather than Republicans. Trump won 57% of white voters in 2016, according to exit polls, but only 8% of black voters, 28% of Hispanic voters and 27% of Asian voters.
Meadows said the president’s problem was not with voting by mail, but rather sending ballots to all registered voters in the country – “even those who don’t ask.” He argued that the voters’ lists were inaccurate and that ballots could be sent to old addresses or the homes of deceased people, which could cause actual residents to vote more than once.
It’s “asking for disaster,” Meadows said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” noting that Trump had previously requested his postal vote to vote in Florida, a critical critical state.
“We want to make sure every vote counts, but only one vote counts. And so when you look at that, this debate is really about a process, ”he continued. “A number of states are now trying to figure out how they will adopt universal postal ballots. It is a disaster, where we will not know the results of the November 3 election and we may not know for months.
Democrats noted that five states – Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington – have voted largely or entirely by mail for years, with few problems. They also pointed out that people who wish to vote on behalf of another person would be liable to prosecution for using a forged signature.
New Jersey Democrats highlighted the fraud in a May special election in which four people were charged as evidence of how the system worked, although nearly 20% of the ballots in that mail-in election were been disqualified due to errors in the way they were completed.
“I actually have some optimism from what people tried to screw with the system and they failed,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy told Fox News Sunday. He added that the individuals had been arrested, charged and would pay the price.
Senator Cory Booker (DN.J.) said voter fraud is “incredibly rare”, but when done by mail, “the reason it’s so easy to find out is that you literally have a written trace.”
Trump’s allies have pointed to the recent primary elections in New York state – where it took six weeks to declare Maloney the winner – as a harbinger of what would happen in November if most of the United States voted by mail .
In a nightmare scenario Meadows presented to Republicans, Pelosi would pick the next president if there isn’t a declared winner by January 20. And Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign, said Democrats were trying to rush into a system that takes years to properly implement.
“We have seen where dogs and even cats have received official communications from registrars, from the Secretary of States,” Miller said on ABC “This week.” “It takes a long time for states to be able to put this in place safely. And to go quickly, a disaster awaits. “
Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, said a recently married friend of his in New Jersey received a ballot under both his new name and maiden name. He also cited Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease specialist, who said there was “no reason” Americans couldn’t vote in person as long as they wore a mask and followed the social distancing guidelines.
“I think what President Trump wants is a fair system,” Kushner told CBS “Face the Nation. “If you have a proven system that has some security mechanisms built into it, that’s okay. But you can’t have a new system and expect Americans to have confidence in the election.
Democrats said the postal service problem wasn’t just about voting, noting that the agency was also providing medicine for the elderly and paychecks for workers. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), However, appeared on three of the political talk shows, where he accused Trump of attempting to suppress the votes by postponing and destroying the post office.
“He wants to sabotage the Postal Service because he doesn’t want several million people to be able to vote by mail,” Sanders said of the president on CNN. “It’s not me. That’s exactly what he said.
Sanders added on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump was “sabotaging our democracy.”
“I guess he thinks that a suppressed vote, a lower turnout, will work for him and it will help him win the election,” he told host Chuck Todd.
Democrats and Republicans agreed on one thing, however, that Congress must act.
Pelosi plans to bring the House back early from the break to pass postal service legislation, though the measure focuses on organizational issues of the agency, not funding. And on Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urged his Republican counterpart, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to bring back the Upper House to take back any bills passed by the House.
Meadows suggested he was ready to make a deal, whether it be restrictive postal service funding legislation or a program that included recovery assistance for Americans and an extension of the protection program. paychecks for small businesses.
“We’ll pass it tomorrow,” Meadows said of such a package. “The president will sign it and it will all go away, because what we are seeing is the Democrats are trying to use this to their political advantage.”
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