DARBY, Pa. -- Each day, when Nick Casselli, president of a Philadelphia postal workers union, sits down at his desk on Main Street in the historic town of Darby, where trolley cars still run and the post office is a source of civic pride, his phone is full of alarmed messages about increasing delays
DARBY, Pa. — Each day, when Nick Casselli, president of a Philadelphia postal workers union, sits down at his desk on Main Street in the historic town of Darby, where trolley cars still run and the post office is a source of civic pride, his phone is full of alarmed messages about increasing delays in mail delivery.
For the most part, experts and employees say, the Postal Service is still capable of operating as usual. Yet the agency has warned states that it may not be able to meet their deadlines for delivering last-minute ballots. And Trump recently said he opposed new postal funding because of his opposition to mail-in voting, which he complains will benefit Democrats and claims without evidence is riddled with fraud.
“It’s just terrifying,” Brownworth said. “Every day I ask my wife, did we get any mail? She says no.” Still, interviews with mail customers, election officials and postal workers in six battleground states show that mail delays — and 2020 worries — are widespread. Democratic lawmakers have accused the president of sabotaging the Postal Service as a means of voter suppression and have started multiple investigations and demanded an end to delays. Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and other top Democrats in the House have begun discussing bringing lawmakers back early from their summer recess to address the issues with the Postal Service, two people familiar with the talks said Saturday.
DeJoy has said he is trying to reform an organization with a “broken business model” facing a litany of billion-dollar losses and declines in mail volumes. Postal workers from small-town post offices to metropolitan distribution centers say they used to operate along a simple motto: “Every piece, every day,” meaning that they did not leave until all of the day’s mail went out the door. No more, they say.
In Ohio, mail-in voting has been common for more than two decades, and one-quarter of the state’s voters regularly cast their ballots by mail. But some postal workers say the recent changes in work rules have drastically slowed their ability to deliver mail, raising concerns that votes cast just several days before the election might not make it in time to be counted.
But a Postal Service spokesman, David A. Partenheimer, disputed that there was anything out of the ordinary, saying that the agency was removing the sorting machines because of declines in the volume of mail. While people are receiving far more packages these days, business and commercial mail is down sharply.
Ohio ran a delayed primary election that was marred by widespread reports of mail slowdowns, especially in Northwest Ohio, prompting Secretary of State Frank LaRose to urge the Postal Service to devote additional resources to making sure ballots were delivered on time.
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