States to Sue Trump Administration Over Postal Changes Amid Voting Fears

Several Democratic state attorneys general said on Tuesday they will sue President Donald Trump’s administration in a bid to block Postal Service changes that may affect mail-in voting in the November U.S. presidential…

ReutersAug 18, 20203 min read

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to suppress mail-in voting as he trails Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden in opinion polls ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

Trump said last week he was against Democratic efforts to include funds for the Postal Service and election infrastructure in coronavirus relief legislation because he wanted to limit mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is scheduled to testify on Friday before the Republican-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, spokesmen for the committee and the Postal Service said. DeJoy, a major political donor and ally of Trump, assumed the job in June.

DeJoy also is scheduled to testify on Monday before the Democratic-led House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson, the Senate committee’s chairman, said that “the Postal Service has had significant financial problems for years, and it is important for everyone to fully understand its current fiscal challenges.”

Johnson added DeJoy should be able to testify “before going before a hostile House committee determined to conduct a show trial.”

The top Democrat on the panel, Senator Gary Peters, said the hearing would “address urgent questions on the Postal Service delays that are causing massive disruptions across the country.”

Democrats have raised concerns that Postal Service cost cutting could lead to missed or delayed ballots. They have pointed to reductions in overtime, restrictions on extra mail transportation trips and new mail sorting and delivery policies as changes that threaten to slow mail delivery – and in some cases, already have.

Trump has repeatedly and without evidence claimed that mail balloting is vulnerable to fraud. Voting by mail is nothing new in the United States, and one in four voters cast ballots that way in 2016.

Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union that represents more than 200,000 employees, told Fox News that DeJoy’s policy changes “are truly slowing down mail, the customers see it … the postal workers see it – mail is getting all backed up.”

(Reporting by Tom Hals, Karen Freifeld, David Shepardson and David Morgan; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Will Dunham)