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Democratic leaders announced Sunday that they are planning an emergency hearing on August 24 for senior U.S. Postal Service officials to testify before Congress after the agency sounded the alarm over its ability to manage the increase in postal voting.
“The President has explicitly stated his intention to manipulate the Postal Service to deny eligible voters access to the ballot for his own re-election,” said the statement signed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D- California, and the Senate Minority Leader. Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., among others. Alarmingly, the Postmaster General – a Trump mega-donor – has acted as an accomplice in the president’s campaign to cheat the election, as he launches sweeping new operational changes that degrade delivery standards and delay mail. “
“The Postal Service itself has warned that voters – even if they send out their ballots by state deadlines – could be disenfranchised in 46 states and Washington, DC, due to continued delays,” the statement continued. “This poses a serious threat to the integrity of the elections and to our very democracy.”
Democrats demanded that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Republican fundraiser and main donor to President Donald Trump who took over the postal service in June, and Chairman of the Postal Services Board of Governors, Michael Duncan, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, testify before the House Oversight Committee next Monday.
This hearing, Democrats said, “will examine far-reaching 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 post during the next November elections. “
The announcement comes as policy changes DeJoy, a former logistics manager, recently implemented, have slowed down the service. The Postmaster General instituted a number of new policies, including a crackdown on overtime pay, which have delayed mail delivery of important items like prescription drugs.
DeJoy was previously scheduled to appear before Congress next month, with Sunday’s announcement coming after an outcry against Congress not moving any faster. The House is not expected to return until early September, although the hearing can proceed without members being recalled.
A spokesperson for the Postal Service did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment.
The postal service has been in a difficult financial situation for years, in part because of its legal obligation to pre-finance pension benefits annually. During the coronavirus pandemic, the volume of letters has dropped dramatically while the number of packages processed has skyrocketed.
Internal documents reviewed by NBC News showed DeJoy is decommissioning 671 of its mail sorting machines, the absence of which will further contribute to a mail slowdown, postal workers said. USPS spokesperson David Partenheimer told NBC News the removal amounted to “normal business adjustments!” and added that the postal service often moves equipment due to fluctuating mail volume.
Meanwhile, many states have recently received letters from the Postal Service warning that their postal voting deadlines are too tight to ensure proper delivery. A number of states are expanding postal voting due to the pandemic, seeking to prevent crowded polling stations and the possible spread of the virus.
Michael Mize, president of the Michigan Postal Workers Union who worked in the Postal Service for nearly 23 years, told NBC News that the current turmoil is “the strongest political attack on the Postal Service – my livelihood – that I ‘ve never seen. “
“My opinion, the position I have taken, is that the date that was made (of DeJoy) and the actions that followed are a direct internal attack on what we are doing and it makes me sick and that makes me angry ”. he said.
But Mize added that he still believes the Postal Service will be able to handle postal voting very well, even with the changes. As others have pointed out, even a large increase in postal ballots would be pales in comparison to the load of parcels the Postal Service processes each year at Christmas.
“I work with these people and I know they are going to do whatever they can to make sure this gets done,” he said. “They’re too proud of it. They’re not just going to bend over and say, ‘Oh, well.’ It just won’t happen. “
Democrats have offered $ 25 billion in emergency funding to the Postal Service. Concerns about the postal service escalated late last week after Trump told Fox Business that postal voting would be difficult if that funding, in addition to the $ 3.6 billion in postal voting funding, was blocked.
“Now they need that money to run the post office, so it could take all those millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said. “But if they don’t get those two things, that means you can’t have universal postal voting because they aren’t equipped to have it.”
In an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Trump had no problem with voting “no excuse for absentees,” but opposed universal postal voting. The president recently asked to vote by mail in Florida.
“I’ll give you that guarantee now,” Meadows said. “The President of the United States will not interfere with anyone who legitimately votes, whether it is the post office or anything else.”
Meadows also suggested that Trump was open to a postal service funding bill that is stand-alone or associated with one of the president’s legislative goals.
At a press conference on Saturday, Trump said “the post office is a disaster” and that DeJoy “wants to make the post office big again.”
Regarding the postal vote, the president said: “Absent is good; mailing, universal, is very, very bad.”
Despite allegations of massive fraud by the president and his supporters, there is no evidence of widespread electoral fraud in the United States, according to numerous surveys and studies.
Asked about the lack of evidence on Sunday, Meadows said: “There is no evidence that there is not (fraud) either.”
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