“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom
of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed
rounds” --Unofficial motto, United
States Postal Service
The post office. The post office?! Oh…really!? C’mon!
Maybe you are like me: increasingly anxious about the
state of our postal system, how its institutional stumbling and intentional
downsizing by Uncle Sam, may be a direct threat to the ability of our nation to
have free and fair and transparent elections come November 3.
The irony is that most of us as citizens and users of
the system, mail senders and mail receivers: up until this weird moment in
history, we haven’t thought much about the man or woman in the light blue
uniform, driving a boxy red white and blue van, who arrives outside of our door
six days a week and delivers the mail.
We just take it for granted.
I still get a little jolt of excitement when I go to
the mail box and open it up and wonder just what treasures it might hold for
me: a get well card or a package from Amazon or my New Yorker or Bicycling
magazines or a postcard from a friend. I know this is a bit nostalgic. As a
boy, I always tried to beat my family members to the mail box and be the first
in my clan to read the latest issue of Life magazine.
For those under the age of 50, you probably won’t get that
reference. Many folks younger than me,
many people in general, view the USPS as a dinosaur of sorts, a quaint relic of
days past, a service that now delivers mostly junk mail and sales flyers and
freebie newspapers, and a very, very rare item called a “letter”.
These have been tough decades for the oldest federal
agency, created by the Continental Congress in 1775, who appointed Benjamin
Franklin as the very first postmaster general.
Recognizing it as an essential service for the nation, it’s work is
actually prescribed in the United States Constitution. For most of its history,
the post office was non-partisan and very good at what it did: delivering the
mail. It has served as a lifeline and gathering spot, and still does, in more
than 31,000 locations is cities and small towns and villages. It is the most ubiquitous
symbol of Uncle Sam and the federal government in our country.
But in this age of email and texts and instant
communication and very high expectations about package delivery (order it today
and get it tomorrow), the USPS has struggled to adapt in the past several years, to this new world of
immediate human connection. In 2020 it
expects to lose more than $13 billion.
And now in these pandemic times, the USPS is being asked to handle and
deliver mail-in election ballots in all fifty states, for a potential pool of
180 million voters. In response to this challenge, the agency sent letters to
all fifty states in July, warning them that it could not guarantee that all the
ballots would be delivered on time, either to the voters or election officials.
Can 2020 get any harder?!?!
In response to this potential national emergency, our
Commander in Chief has stepped up and demanded additional funding for the
agency and spoken publicly of his great respect for the USPS and the mail-in
voting. KIDDING!! Instead, he’s actually called the post office “a joke”, and
insists that mail-in voting will lead to widespread fraud, thus undermining the
legitimacy of the electoral process in a year when millions and millions of us
will actually need to use a mail-in ballot.
And the Congress? Well, if they can’t come to terms
with the administration or the opposition over efforts to extend unemployment
benefits to tens of millions of our suffering citizens, why should we expect them
to take any action on the USPS?
FYI: for the record, mail-in voter fraud is very rare
in the United States. Statistics complied by MIT researcher Charles Reynolds
and National Vote at Home Institute and Coalition leader Amber McReynolds,
report that in the past twenty years, 250 million mail-in ballots have been
cast. Of that number, there have 1,2000 suspected cases of fraud and 143
criminal convictions. That means the
chances of voter fraud, statistically speaking, are 0.00006. Remember that
number the next time you hear a politician attacking mail-in balloting.
USPS officials do have one important piece of advice
to voters who wish to use a mail-in ballot for the November general election:
request it at least fifteen days before the election. Let’s repeat that: if you
want to vote by mail, get your ballot sooner, not later. Be in touch with your
local election officials NOW. Confirm that you are registered to vote. If you
want to use the mails for your vote, it is finally up to you as a citizen to
make sure that this will happen.
We as voters need to be vigilant and to act wisely and
take responsibility for our ballots—whether in person or by mail. God knows
this may just be the most important election in at least a generation. Get your
ballot. Let your voice be heard. Then maybe say a big prayer for the USPS too.
They are going to need all the help, human and divine, that they can get.
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night nor
pandemics nor politicians, stays these couriers from the swift completion of
their appointed rounds.
Let’s hope so.
