The United States Postal Service is being sabotaged by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, in support of President Trump’s quixotic and self-serving campaign to undercut and discredit voting-by-mail in the coming General Election. DeJoy’s postal slowdown strategy became more overt recently with the removal and destruction of hundreds of USPS mail collection boxes and letter-sorting machines across the country. His demolition derby coincides with the imminent onset of mail balloting for the November 2020 elections, as well as with the Congressional Recess.
Our Senators and Representatives have cut short their recess and called this rogue federal Postmaster General and USPS Directors into public testimony, while the evidence of their disenfranchisement campaign is fresh. State Attorneys General are planning to prosecute election subversion, particularly in states like Washington with 100% vote-by-mail.
DeJoy has announced a “pause” in his destructive actions, and will claim they were “business as usual” and only accidentally coincided with his Boss’s open campaign against mail-in-voting. The test of whether he is lying will be his commitment to REVERSE, not just delay, his policy changes, overtime disallowances, treatment of ballots as Second Class Mail, and removal of postal collection boxes and letter-sorting equipment. We will listen carefully for his disavowal of Trump’s anti-mail-voting campaign. We will also listen carefully for the same from all Republican Members of Congress.
In 2009, we the people of Orcas Island, with the help of our Congressional delegation, won a local battle to save the Deer Harbor Post Office. Now we the people of the entire country must enjoin both parties in Congress to prevent this sabotage of the USPS from derailing the most important election in our lifetimes. After all, along with the U.S. Armed Forces, the U.S. State Department, and the other federal agencies, the U.S. Postal Service is the People’s institution, and not any politician’s personal workforce.
Norm Zimlich
Deer Harbor
