President Trump has threatened to withhold funds from the United States Postal Service. The new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, has embarked on cost-cutting measures to eliminate overtime and remove sorting machines. These actions have created worries that Americans, reluctant to walk into voting booths because of Covid-19, will be unable to vote by mail this year.
I served as a regulator of the Postal Service for nearly 18 years under three presidents and I urge everyone to be calm. Don’t fall prey to the alarmists on both sides of this debate. The Postal Service is not incapacitated. It is still fully capable of delivering the mail. The focus of our collective concerns should be on how the Postal Service can improve the speed of delivery for election mail.
First, the president is wrong about the Postal Service’s finances. While the agency indeed has financial problems, as a result of a huge increase in packages being sent through the system and a credit line through the CARES Act, it has access to about $25 billion in cash. Its own forecasts predict that it will have enough money to operate into 2021.
The Postal Service’s shaky financial situation has to do in large part with the drop in first-class mail (typically used for letters), about 30 percent less than a decade ago. But the service’s expensive, overbuilt infrastructure can absorb the addition of more mail in 2020 — including election mail that is mailed to and sent back by every voter in every state.
The new postmaster general’s management team still includes many knowledgeable and seasoned executives. And the Postal Service has over 500,000 employees who are remarkably honest, dedicated and used to working through emergencies: hurricanes, snow storms, social unrest and pandemics.
While the Postal Service has contemplated many different approaches to modernizing and improving efficiency, there has not been a consensus on how much the service should reduce costs. It is not at all surprising that Mr. DeJoy’s choice of particularly visible cuts has raised alarms.
The Office of the Inspector General of the Postal Service has agreed to a review of the changes. And Congress has been called back to conduct its own review next week, restore trust in the institution and ensure that voting by mail proceeds smoothly.
Given that there is enough money and perhaps more if the president agrees to additional bailout funds; that there is plenty of capacity in the system; and that voting by mail can alleviate a health threat to the nation, the Postal Service should be made to handle all election mail as if it were first-class mail. This is where the policy discussions surrounding the Postal Service should settle.
Most election-related mail is sent at nonprofit rates. The 1993 National Voter Registration Act requires the Postal Service to charge state and local election offices the same price for postage as nonprofit mailers. The Postal Service has a history of providing extra care and attention to election-related mail, on the level of first-class mail: usually two to four days for delivery. A special logo and bar code identifiers were created so that mail sorters were able to pull election mail out from the routine mail stream to be sure it was delivered as soon as possible.
But a recent letter sent by Thomas J. Marshall, the general counsel for the Postal Service, to election officials around the country seems to suggest that election mail will now be treated like regular nonprofit mail (typically three to 10 days for delivery) and may take as long as 15 days. This is not acceptable.
The Postal Service has the capacity to ensure that ballots sent to voters arrive on time and that ballots dropped into the system by voters are postmarked and delivered in times that accord with state and local guidelines. In their meeting with Congress next week, the leaders of the Postal Service should guarantee that election mail will continue to be treated as first-class mail. The Congress should agree that there will be no additional financial support for the Postal Service without this promise.
But state and local election officials must also recognize the possibilities of delays and plan for earlier mailings so there will be more days for ballots to be returned. Voters must be reminded to send in requests for ballots, change of address, voter registration forms and especially filled-out ballots as early as possible.
The Postal Service does indeed need a bailout from Congress so that it can be counted on to deliver the mail, medicines and other vital products for years to come. It needs funds to rebuild its more than 30,000 post offices and aging vehicle fleet to reduce its reliance on temporary workers and to broaden the range of services it provides. But these problems do not affect this year’s election.
Americans must continue to support the Postal Service, whose existence is enshrined in our Constitution, by using its vote-by-mail services to save lives now and to protect our democracy in the future.
Ruth Y. Goldway was a commissioner of the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission from 1998 to 2015 and its chair from 2009 to 2014.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
