Congressional Candidates and Voters Sue to Stop Trump’s Sabotage of the Post Office

Edited from original photo of a group of protestors hold a demonstration in front of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s home in Greensboro, North Carolina, on August 16, 2020. Logan Cyrus / AFP via Getty Images

By Marjorie Cohen / TruthOut / August 19, 2020

A lawsuit that promises to be one of many was filed yesterday to stop Donald Trump’s sabotage of the mail leading up to the presidential election.

Mondaire Jones et al. v. U.S. Postal Service, Postmaster General, and Donald Trump was brought by Democratic candidates for national and state congressional seats, as well as voters who cast mail ballots to protect themselves against the COVID-19 pandemic. Several state attorneys general are expected to file litigation this week.

“The postmaster general and the members of USPS [United States Postal Service] board of governors can be sued for injunctive relief, or even for damages,” Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky told Truthout. In addition, he said, “The USPS can be sued for an injunction.”

In late June, nonpartisan nonprofit Protect Democracy filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents relating to the USPS’s preparations for the anticipated surge in mail voting in the 2020 election. The USPS resisted the request and on August 12, Protect Democracy filed a lawsuit asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to order the USPS to provide the requested documents “on an expedited basis.”

The complaint in Jones seeks an injunction requiring that the defendants ensure sufficient funding for the USPS so it can treat absentee and mail ballots equal to in-person ballots and “handle a record level of mail voting.” The complaint also asks for a declaratory judgment that the defendants violated the plaintiffs’ rights under the U.S. Constitution.

“President Donald J. Trump and his newly appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy have set about to ensure USPS cannot reliably deliver election mail,” the complaint reads. “As a Trump deputy campaign manager put it, ‘[t]he President views vote by mail as a threat to his election.’”

Trump is weaponizing the Postal Service to help him win.

On May 6, the USPS board of governors appointed DeJoy, who has multiple conflicts of interest, to be postmaster general. Since Dejoy was not an appointee vetted by the Senate, there was no ethics investigation before his appointment.

DeJoy instituted several changes that weaken the USPS’s ability to deliver the mail in a timely manner. One new policy states, “If the plants run late, they will keep the mail for the next day.” It forbids any overtime and “all other measures used to ameliorate staffing shortages.” Extra trips are not permitted and carriers are required to return from their routes on time even if they haven’t completed their deliveries for that day.

Since June, with no reason or explanation, the USPS has removed or destroyed at least 671 mail-sorting machines throughout the United States. The Jones complaint states that “some major cities have already had their ability to sort mail reduced by hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail per hour.” As of August 14, the capacity of the USPS to process mail has been reduced by over 21.4 million pieces of mail per hour.

The “burden of this diminished capacity” falls, at least partly, on locations in states where the election will likely be close, as well as major cities likely to go Democratic that will influence the national popular vote tally.

In addition, the USPS began to remove many mailboxes in several states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Montana. That process apparently stopped after public blowback.

The USPS sent letters to 46 states and Washington, D.C., saying it can’t guarantee that all votes cast by mail will arrive in time to be tallied for the November election. Even voters who comply with their state election laws cannot be sure their votes will be counted.

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.