Rashida Tlaib says the cuts already made to the Postal Service must be restored.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/us/elections/rashida-tlaib-says-the-cuts-already-made-to-the-postal-service-must-be-restored.html

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Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, credited postal workers who raised alarms about changes in post offices nationwide for the postmaster general announcing that he would suspend changes at post offices around the country until after the November election.

But the words of the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, are not enough, Ms. Tlaib said on Tuesday outside a Detroit post office.

“Those changes have already been made,” she said. “So until those machines get back into the sorting centers and until those boxes get back into our neighborhoods where we can actually put our ballots in and until the actions meet his statement, we continue to fight. We are witnessing in real time, the undermining of the Postal Service by the Trump administration. And we know it’s not right.”

There are concerns about absentee ballots not reaching local clerks in time, Ms. Tlaib said, but also concerns about slowing the delivery of prescription medicines, Social Security and coronavirus relief checks.

Keith Combs, the president of the Detroit chapter of the American Postal Workers Union, said four sorting machines that can handle up to 35,000 pieces of mail an hour had been removed from the city’s postal handling center. Several more have been removed from a postal center in Pontiac, a northern suburb of Detroit.

“There are some things that are going on that are not coincidental,” he said. “There are machines that are being removed from the plant. There is mail being slowed down. Overtime is being cut. Collection boxes are being shut out. Anyone who is saying anything different in Washington is not telling the truth. Things are being done that I’ve never seen during my 31 years in the Postal Service.”

Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, said action was crucial not only on a federal level to ensure that absentee and mail-in voting go smoothly, but at the state level, too. She is fighting to get legislation passed that would allow absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted, even if the ballots are not delivered until after Election Day.

“In our August primary, more than 6,400 voters mailed in their ballots prior to Election Day, and they were received in the two days that followed,” she said. “We anticipate that number could double or more this fall, if things don’t change.”