A New Clash Over Mail Voting: The Cost of the Postage

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/us/politics/post-office-mail-in-voting.html

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WASHINGTON — The Senate’s highest-ranking Democrat assailed the Postal Service on Tuesday for what he said was an effort to jack up the cost to states of mail-in voting, a new line of criticism in the escalating dispute over ensuring Americans can vote safely this fall in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said the Postal Service under the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, a major donor to the Trump campaigns, had “informed some states that they may need to pay a first-class rate to deliver ballots rather than the normal rate — nearly tripling the cost.”

At issue is whether states choose to categorize their mail-in ballots as first-class mail or marketing mail, the latter of which carries about one-third of the cost but gets lower priority.

“At a time when people will have to vote by mail in record numbers because they can’t or won’t go vote in person, the postmaster general is saying we should triple the rate of cost to vote by mail?” Mr. Schumer said. “What a despicable derogation of democracy.”

Mr. Schumer suggested that Mr. DeJoy, who took over the post office in May, had no relevant experience for the job and was a Republican donor carrying out a political agenda.

“If anyone had any thought that this postmaster general was on the level, it’s now dispensed,” Mr. Schumer said.

The Postal Service responded that Mr. DeJoy had merely been suggesting to local elections officials how they could most efficiently carry out a vote-by-mail election, not mandating increased costs.

Martha Johnson, a spokeswoman for the agency, said the Postal Service “strongly” recommends that states and local governments choose to mail their ballots to voters at the higher rate, since they would typically then be delivered in two to five days. Marketing mail, by contrast, may take three to 10 days, she said.

If local elections officials don’t pay the higher rate, some ballots could miss deadlines set for receiving them, she said.

“In many cases, certain deadlines concerning mail-in ballots may be incompatible with the Postal Service’s delivery standards, especially if election officials use marketing mail to send blank ballots to voters,” Ms. Johnson said. “Using marketing mail will result in slower delivery times and will increase the risk that voters will not receive their ballots in time to return them by mail.”

Democrats and their allies have grown deeply distrustful of Mr. DeJoy’s intentions during his short tenure leading the post office, where he has tried to slash expenses in ways that have led to slowdowns and questions about the Postal Service’s ability to handle a much greater volume of mail ballots in a timely way this year.

Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said Mr. Schumer was “absolutely right in raising alarm.”

“This year, where voting by mail is going to be crucial, it is alarming to make these cuts and suggest to state and local governments that they pay for expedited service when our democracy is relying on this,” Ms. Gupta said. “It’s hard not to see this as a political move by the Trump administration.”

Shifting to first-class mail could impact the budgets of some local governments, depending on what mailing system they currently use, elections experts said Tuesday.

Whether states or voters pay to return their mail-in ballots to election officials, those ballots are returned via first-class mail. Many states already use the first-class service to send ballots to voters, but some, particularly Western states, moved to standard mail for the outbound trip to citizens as their vote-by-mail populations burgeoned.

For years, the Postal Service has pushed for states to use the first-class rate, but amid the pandemic, those calls have become louder, according to Tammy Patrick, senior adviser at the Democracy Fund, a nonpartisan grant-making foundation focused on elections and governance.

The post office also has provided a logo for mail-in ballots that allows them to get priority treatment, and it maintains that it has not changed that policy. But Ms. Patrick said the message coming from the Postal Service seems to contradict itself.

On the one hand, special demarcation on ballots helps postal workers prioritize and expedite their shipping, but on the other, Mr. DeJoy is now maintaining that the distinction does not guarantee quicker service, she said.

At a meeting of an election task force in Ohio this month, Justin Glass, the Postal Service’s director of political election mail, said that the official election mail logo brings greater visibility to the ballots but does not speed the process.

“Just because we put an official election mail logo on a piece, it doesn’t automatically upgrade that to an expedited level of service,” he said. “That’s not something that the Postal Service can guarantee.”

States have already expressed concern that they do not have nearly enough funds to conduct elections during the pandemic.

According to an analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York-based think tank, changes to election procedures would probably cost states $4 billion cumulatively this election season, compared with the $400 million appropriated by Congress in the last stimulus package.

“States are already strapped for cash,” Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, said Tuesday. “At a time when the Congress has not appropriated sufficient funds to help election officials run these elections this November, it’s ridiculous to contemplate adding more to their budgets.”

Last week, Mr. Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to Mr. DeJoy calling for a reversal of numerous steps he has taken that they say undermine the Postal Service.

Mr. DeJoy has argued that he is modernizing the money-losing agency to make it more efficient, but the Democratic leaders objected to his cuts to overtime for postal workers, restrictions on transportation, testing of new mail sorting and delivery policies at hundreds of post offices and the reduction of the quantity and use of processing equipment at mail processing plants.

In comments made Friday to the Postal Service’s board of governors, Mr. DeJoy defended his performance as bringing cost savings necessary for “a trajectory for long-term financial stability.”

He said the changes he had made — including limitations on overtime — would not delay the timely delivery of ballots.

“Despite any assertions to the contrary, we are not slowing down election mail or any other mail,” Mr. DeJoy told the board members. “Instead, we continue to employ a robust and proven process to ensure proper handling of all election mail.”