We moved recently, an event that went remarkably smoothly, given the fact that it occurred during the pandemic. One of the less straightforward aspects was obtaining our mail, not because the post office wasn’t forwarding our mail appropriately, but because we and our new neighbors still lacked secure post boxes for delivery.
I made frequent enough trips to the central USPS receiving facility that the staff recognized me despite my mask and knew my address without asking, and would promptly bring out our mail. They knew before I did when our builder had the right letter box, where we could now conveniently and securely pick up or send mail from home.
Initially, I had offered to pick up our neighbors’ mail as well, hoping to save others a trip. I was politely reminded that the USPS is solely responsible for seeing that everyone’s mail makes it into exactly the right hands, so they couldn’t let me do that. Point well taken. Beleaguered as they are, postal workers take their job very seriously, and clearly would bend over backwards so that the mail can go through.
Enter the current occupant of the White House, who is so cravenly paranoid about his re-election prospects that he is hell-bent on discouraging voter turnout. For him, the silver lining to the pandemic he has otherwise been downplaying is that people who might otherwise show up at the polls on Election Day are rightly worried about voting becoming a super-spreader event. If only “his” people show up, he figures the forces of gerrymandering, foreign interference, and opponent-slandering might just tip the scales his way.
If people value their own health and respect that of others, the absentee ballot should come to the rescue. Even in our own state, where the current governor has taken unseemly pride in systematically vetoing nearly every bill that has crossed his desk, fear of COVID is now a legitimate indication for voting by mail.
So what does our dismantler in chief take it upon himself to do? He uses every device he has at his disposal to undermine the credibility of the United States Postal Service, which has served Americans laudably since it was first established by Benjamin Franklin. He warns that voting by mail will lead to widespread fraud and abuse, without a shred of evidence. My own recent experiences suggest how difficult it will be to game the system the postal service has in place, with proper vigilance and oversight from dedicated election officials and postal workers.
If he can’t instill distrust, the president thinks he will simply hamstring the postal service with draconian cuts and absurd measures to limit its ability to do its job. And that he has done, appointing a major donor to his campaign to be postmaster general. This man, Louis DeJoy, is the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse. From his position DeJoy has deliberately and systematically hindered the ability of the USPS to deliver the mail, by refusing needed funding, forbidding overtime, removing massive sorting machines, eliminating countless mailboxes, and preventing other efforts postal workers make to ensure timely mail delivery.
The USPS has been, and remains, a vital link in our democracy. That the services it provides are threatened, and that its truly dedicated employees – and, frontline workers, let me remind you – are so blatantly undermined by this most unpresidential of elected officials is a travesty. We need to use the power of the ballot box, and the mail box, to change that.
(Millie LaFontaine of Concord is a retired neurologist.)