US Postal Service Changes Hurt Mail-In Voting, NY AG Says

Three more states, and two of the nation’s largest cities, are going to court over recent changes to the U.S. Postal Service that have raised concerns about mail-in voting in this November’s elections.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James took the lead on Tuesday in filing a federal lawsuit against President Donald J. Trump, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and the U.S. Postal Service on behalf of New York, New Jersey and Hawaii.

The lawsuit challenges operational changes at the post office that James says have slowed mail delivery and could endanger the integrity of the upcoming national election. Those changes include the removal of dozens of high-speed mail sorting machines, eliminating late and extra mail delivery trips, and cutting or curtailing overtime for postal workers.

New York City and the city and county of San Francisco are also participating in the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. Altogether, the plaintiffs want the court to deem the changes unconstitutional and to stop any additional changes from being made that might impact the ability of the U.S. Postal Service to handle mail-in voting.

“The United States Postal Service has been thrown into chaos,” the lawsuit opens by saying. “Thanks to a series of sweeping policy changes beleaguered by partisan meddling, the independent agency has become a political football set to undermine a federal election.”

Spearheaded by New York, the lawsuit is the third filed against DeJoy and the U.S. Postal Service in recent days. Washington officials filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of the Pacific Northwest state, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin on August 18.

Three days later, on August 21, Pennsylvania’s attorney general led a coalition of that state, California, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina and the District of Columbia in filing a lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service over the changes. Around the time the first of the lawsuits was filed, Postmaster General DeJoy said he would halt any further planned changes.

The latest lawsuit was prompted, in part, by DeJoy’s recent testimony to Congress, as well as that of former vice chairman of the Postal Service’s Board of Governors David Williams, it says.

In testimony before Senate and House committees, DeJoy denied allegations that the changes he introduced just two months earlier were meant to interfere with mail-in voting in this year’s elections. He told members of Congress many of the moves were set in motion before he took over as postmaster general, and others he directed were needed to improve efficiency, according to Politico. He also said he had no intention of undoing some of the changes, including returning any of the mail sorters that have been removed.

Williams, meanwhile, testified to Congress that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin directly interfered with the Postal Service’s operations for months before Williams resigned in April.

During a press conference announcing the lawsuit Tuesday, James said state officials decided to take legal action “after it was clear that congressional oversight and public outcry would not address this issue,” CNN reported.

According to the new multi-state lawsuit, 52 mail sorting machines have been removed from postal facilities in New York state, including 15 from New York City. Another 20 were removed from mail processing centers in New Jersey, it says.

While just four sorting machines were taken out of service in Hawaii, their removal resulted in the state’s sorting capacity dropping by one-third – from 300,000 pieces of mail per minute to 200,000, the lawsuit claims.

Further evidence of the effect of the changes on postal customers could be found in the case of three towns in western New York state – Bowmansville, DePew and Lancaster – where residents usually get 80,000 pieces of mail per day, but on July 11 no mail was delivered, according to the lawsuit.

Similar interruptions were reported in several towns and cities on several days in July and August.

“At a time when Americans are depending on the mail to secure food, housing, medicine, and more in the middle of a pandemic, these changes are triggering dramatic delays,” the lawsuit says. The backlog is “interfering with the administration of myriad state and local government functions, and … will endanger state and local plans for the November election as well.”

DeJoy has said publicly he would guarantee the delivery of all mail-in ballots cast on time for Election Day. In an Aug. 21 statement, the U.S. Postal Service insisted “Postmaster General DeJoy’s number one priority is to deliver election mail on-time.” It went on to say the agency “has more than enough capacity, including collection boxes and processing equipment, to handle all election mail this year.”

The lawsuit filed Tuesday cited letters sent by the U.S. Postal Service on July 31 to 46 states warning that “the timely delivery of mail-in ballots for the November 3, 2020 election ‘cannot be guaranteed’,” because the states’ election laws were now “incongruous with the Postal Service’s delivery standards.”

Have you experienced delays in the delivery of your mail? Let us know in the comment section below.

The states and cities are represented by their local attorneys general, county counsel, and city counsel.

The U.S. Postal Service Mail-In Voting Lawsuit is State of New York, et al. v. Donald J. Trump, et al., Case No. 1:20-cv-02340, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

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