Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter.
The postmaster general being sworn in before he testified at a virtual Senate hearing.
Election mail will be delivered 'fully and on time,' DeJoy vows
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy promised on Friday that the Postal Service would fulfill its "sacred duty" to deliver election mail this fall and said he was "extremely highly confident" that even mail-in ballots sent close to Election Day would be delivered on time.
In the first of his two appearances before Congress this month, the embattled postmaster sought to tamp down public outcry over cutbacks and to rebut allegations by Democrats and voting rights groups that he's collaborating with President Trump in an extraordinary effort to undermine the integrity of the election.
DeJoy, a major Trump donor who became the nation's top postal official 10 weeks ago, testified to a Republican-majority Senate committee that he is not working on behalf of the White House. And "the insinuation is quite frankly outrageous," he declared, that he is out to ruin the central exercise of American democracy with policy changes rendering impossible the timely delivery and return of an unprecedented tens of millions of absentee ballots sure to be cast because of the pandemic.
"There have been no changes in any policies with regard to election mail for the 2020 election," he said during a virtual hearing of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "The Postal Service is fully capable and committed to delivering the nation's election mail fully and on time."
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter
He also pledged at one point that USPS would treat all ballot applications and returned voter envelopes as first class mail, which has top delivery priority, even if it is marked and paid for as slower service.
DeJoy, a former logistics executive, also testified he has not spoken with President Trump, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin or White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about postal service changes and has not faced political pressure to reduce capacity for election mail.
The president has stoked concerns by deriding the Postal Service as a "joke" and repeatedly claiming without evidence that too many votes cast away from polling places will produce a fraudulent election. "The honorable thing to do is drop the Mail-In Scam before it is too late!" he tweeted last week, one of dozens such missives since the spring.
"The board's committed, the postal workers are committed, the union leadership is committed to having a successful election," DeJoy testified.
His recently implemented cost-cutting policies including cutbacks on overtime, reduced extra-delivery trips and removal of sorting machines and mailboxes. The changes spurred widespread anxiety about ballot delivery — especially as images went viral of truckloads of removed mailboxes, a roundup he said he did not know about in advance,
"When I found out about it," he said, "and looked at the excitement it was creating, I decided to stop it and we will pick it up after the election, but this is a normal process that has been around, it's been around 50 years."
A group of 90 House Democrats called on the Postal Service's board of governors in a letter Wednesday to rein in DeJoy and consider firing him if he did not reverse more cost-cutting moves than just those he said on Tuesday would be suspended until after the election. And on Friday six state attorneys general sued him and the Postal Service in federal court, alleging that changes at the USPS amounted to voting rights violations.
Adding to concerns over election readiness, the Postal Service last month warned 46 states their voters are at risk of being disenfranchised, since their deadlines for requesting and returning ballots are incompatible with mail delivery standards.
This notice had nothing particularly to do with the extraordinary circumstances of 2020, DeJoy said, and a similar letter is sent before every national election.
"This was not a change from anything we have done in previous years," he said. "It was just more detail and more emphasis put on it partly because of the expected rise in vote by mail and also because of the pandemic."
Asked if he supports voting by mail, DeJoy revealed that he plans to use the process to cast his ballot in North Carolina, which has no-excuse absentee voting. "I've voted by mail for a number of years," he said. "The Postal Service will deliver every ballot and process every ballot in time that it receives."
DeJoy is set to testify before the Democrat-led House Oversight and Reform Committee on Monday.
And on Saturday, the House is scheduled to interrupt its summer break long enough to vote on legislation that would deliver $25 billion to the USPS to address its budget troubles and also countermand many of the recent organizational changes. The Senate has no plans to vote on the measure.
- Postal Service warns tossup states of delivery challenges - The ... ›
- Trump: No more cash for Postal Service money for elections - The ... ›
- USPS gets more blame than it deserves for ballot woes - The Fulcrum ›
- DeJoy says he's curbing USPS changes until after election - The ... ›
- Democrats attack DeJoy over pre-election postal changes - The Fulcrum ›
- USPS delivered nearly all election mail on time, per report - The Fulcrum ›
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter.
Claim: Mail-in ballots can be sent to the wrong address. Fact check: False
Absentee voting refers to when a voter requests a ballot for an election and is then sent one in the mail. Vote-by-mail, which is what Sen. Tom Cotton is most likely referring to as "mass mail-in voting," is a system of sending every registered voter (an important distinction from "everyone") a ballot without a request. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Colorado, Hawaii, Utah, Washington and Oregon were already vote-by-mail states. But now California, Nevada and Vermont will also automatically send ballots to registered voters, while still having in-person options.
Vote-by-mail states send the ballot to the address on file in the voter registration database; the address was verified during the registration process. For example, in Colorado the ballot will be "sent to the mailing address you provided for your voter registration file." It's the voters' responsibility to update their address if they move.
These vote-by-mail states usually have the cleanest voter files because they interact with voters so regularly, according to Audrey Kline, the national policy director at the National Vote at Home Institute. Even if a ballot gets sent to the wrong address, it's most likely due to voter inaction rather than fraud.
"It's not like my ballot is going to end up in another city randomly," she wrote in an email. "Errors usually center around people not updating their voter registration before a ballot is mailed. So if you move and don't tell your clerk, you ballot could arrive at your old address. This in and of itself isn't usually a huge issue — they are non-forwardable and get sent back to the clerk." If someone does gets the wrong ballot mailed to them and then tries to impersonate that voter, that fraud is detectable by signature matching and other security policies.
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter
"The fact is that mail ballot fraud on the scale that people are warning of is just not practical or economical," Kline said. "People say 'ripe for fraud' because nobody has figured out how to do it on a large scale, but they think it's still possible and are trying to keep the argument alive."
- Lessons from Oregon, the top-ranked vote-by-mail state - The Fulcrum ›
- Mail-in voting benefits neither party, is nearly fraud-free - The Fulcrum ›
- Poll: Young people want to vote by mail, but don't know how - The ... ›
- Trump threatens lawsuit to stop Nevada's vote-by-mail plan - The ... ›
- 500,000 ballots already rejected in 2020 elections - The Fulcrum ›
- USPS is in hot water again - The Fulcrum ›
- Vote Smarter 2020: Options for returning your mail-in ballot - The Fulcrum ›
- How Colorado became the model for a vote-by-mail election - The Fulcrum ›
- Fact checking claims about national popular vote - The Fulcrum ›
- Fact checking claims about questionable ballots in Calif. - The Fulcrum ›
- Fact checking claims about questionable ballots in Calif. - The Fulcrum ›
Claim: USPS is advising voters to send in ballots two weeks before Election Day. Fact check: Mixed
.@USPS says you should give mail in ballots at least 14 days round trip. No guarantees. So if you plan to vote by… https://t.co/EVFmT1DdzF— Tony Dokoupil (@Tony Dokoupil)1595626031.0
Tony Dokoupil, co-host of "CBS This Morning," tweeted this claim last week, and it has been picked up by many other Twitter and Instagram accounts. There have been multiple reports of an impending crisis regarding the ability of the United States Postal Service to process election mail this fall, as thousands of voters switch to absentee ballots amid the Covid-19 pandemic. An internal memo obtained by The Washington Post even warns of slowed-down mail delivery at the direction of the newly appointed postmaster general. This all comes amid President Trump's criticisms of the Postal Service, calling it a "joke" during a bill signing in April and demanding the agency increase package rates to stay competitive.
Martha Johnson, a USPS spokeswoman, wrote in an email that the "Postal Service is committed to delivering Election Mail in a timely manner."
She continued: "Customers who opt to vote through the U.S. Mail must understand their local jurisdiction's requirements for timely submission of absentee ballots, including postmarking requirements. Voters must use First-Class Mail or an expedited level of service to return their completed ballots. We recommend that jurisdictions immediately communicate and advise voters to request ballots at the earliest point allowable but no later than 15 days prior to the election date. The Postal Service recommends that domestic, non-military voters mail their ballots at least one week prior to their state's due date to allow for timely receipt by election officials. The Postal Service also recommends that voters contact local election officials for information about deadlines."
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter
While the USPS didn't explicitly say ballots require a 14-day "round trip," the agency is urging voters to mail ballots seven days before their state's postmark date, which is often Election Day. The Postal Service sent a letter to election officials in May detailing mail requirements for these absentee ballots.
.@USPS says you should give mail in ballots at least 14 days round trip. No guarantees. So if you plan to vote by… https://t.co/EVFmT1DdzF— Tony Dokoupil (@Tony Dokoupil)1595626031.0
According to the Election Assistance Commission, about 332,000 mail-in ballots weren't counted in 2016 for a variety of reasons, including missing the deadline.
- A Wisconsin do-over? Mail delaying ballots beyond Ohio's primary day ›
- Biden backs vote-at-home, says Trump out to undermine election ... ›
- Myth-busting the top 10 objections to 'vote at home' systems - The ... ›
- Trump takes back willingness to help USPS but House steps in - The Fulcrum ›
- N.J., Ky expand mail voting access, Ind. does not - The Fulcrum ›
- Ohio election returns will emphasize uncounted mailed votes - The Fulcrum ›
- Pairing business case with civics case for a USPS rescue - The Fulcrum ›
- Red mirage means media must caution on election night - The Fulcrum ›
- Postal Service gets good news in new international ratings - The Fulcrum ›