A USPS employee works outside post office in Wheeling, Ill., Dec. 3, 2021. The U.S. Postal Service delivered more than 54 million ballots for the 2022 midterm election, with nearly 99% of ballots delivered to election officials within three days, officials said Monday, Jan. 9, 2023.
AP File Photo
We are just shy of nine weeks from the Nov. 3 election, making it very hard to justify the rapid attempt by the U.S. Postal Service to build and implement a sweeping national system to handle mail-in ballots as per an executive order (EO) by President Donald Trump.
Forget the politics for a moment, please. Do you really trust a bureaucracy as large as USPS to effectively create and launch an entirely new computer system, mail scanning system and rules connected to a national voter list, all to track and potentially block delivery of mail ballots to voters?
The EO itself remains a hotbed of court disputes, and do not mistake the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent order allowing the process to continue as a declaration of legality. It is not. The order said the states that filed the suit lacked standing because the EO did not yet cause any harm. Specifically, the unsigned order said the EO “does nothing to them,” while adding “the Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell.”
Put another way, SCOTUS ruled that actions taken so far were not hurting the states or anyone because it involved planning to implement, and not implementing. Yet clearly, if USPS launches a website and scans mail to determine if ballots are being sent to valid voters, that is implementation, not planning.
All of which means any rapid deployment of the new postal voting system is almost guaranteed to face both substantial legal action and a flurry of bugs and failures simply because of the speed of the project and the scope of the work. If this system is worth putting in place, it is worth taking the time to make sure it is accurate and efficient, and it is worth letting all legal questions get fully resolved.
But there’s another reason we oppose this hasty effort, and it has nothing to do with national politics or courts. This power grab through an agency that should largely be an apolitical delivery service is a deep insult to the many people who diligently work in our county to assure safe and fair elections.
Luzerne County is no stranger to election concerns. We have worked through issues with securing ballot drop-off boxes. We’ve seen polling locations run out of paper, open late, and have problems with the operation of equipment. We believe that county officials and election workers have repeatedly acquitted themselves well each time, working hard to rapidly resolve concerns and take measures to prevent a recurrence.
And here’s an important part: Their work is done largely in public view, by people we can know and hold accountable. The plans to use the postal service to police mail-in ballots hand the job to nameless, faceless people working out of sight and beyond any similar accountability.
There’s one last, big irony that should give even reform supporters pause. The decision by the Founding Fathers to enshrine local control over elections in the Constitution created a bulwark against widespread election rigging. There are too many people in too many places to easily influence election outcomes nationwide. Centralizing control of mail-in ballots with the USPS can potentially make mass vote rigging easier, not harder.
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