The Dems’ Phony Election Mail ‘Crisis’ Is Over, But The Real One Remains

I&I Editorial

The New York Times on Monday declared that the “Postal Crisis Ripples Across Nation as Election Looms.” On Tuesday, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy canceled changes he’d started to enact that Democrats claimed were “sabotaging” mail delivery at the behest of President Donald Trump.

DeJoy said it was “to avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gloated that “They felt the heat. And that’s what we were trying to do, make it too hot for them to handle.”

Democrats had claimed that not only was the situation at the post office a crisis, but it was one engineered by President Donald Trump and the Trump-supporting DeJoy to disenfranchise voters and steal the election. They repeatedly brought it up on the first day of their convention. DeJoy has been called to testify this week. Pelosi scheduled an “emergency” vote on a United States Postal Service rescue bill for Friday.

So now that DeJoy has backed down, it seems like the Democrats had a point, doesn’t it?

Not exactly. The crisis as they described it never existed. It was a fiction they peddled to damage Trump’s reelection bid – one the Trump-hating mainstream press was all too eager to amplify

But what about all those reports of mail delays? Well, they weren’t based on any official measures or audits. The stories were all anecdotal. What’s more, most of the complaints about service disruptions and mail delays came from postal worker unions — which have all endorsed Biden for president.

Besides, the postal service has been plagued with delays for years. Back in 2015, a USPS inspector general issued an alert about a “substantial increase in delayed mail.” It said in the first six months of 2015, nearly 500 million pieces of mail were delayed, compared with the year before. That’s despite the fact that the USPS had lowered its standards for what it considered “on time” delivery.

“The impacts on customer service and employees have been considerable,” the IG report concluded.

By the way, Joe Biden was vice president when that was happening.

And you don’t have to look very hard to find multiple news stories of lousy mail service around the country before DeJoy took the helm. Here are just a few samples:

• ‘It’s a disaster’; Affton residents seeing red over issues with USPS”
• “Neighbors frustrated with mail delivery issues”
• “Postal Service staffing shortage causing mail, package delays”
• “USPS mail service in Ypsilanti blasted by hundreds at town meeting”
• “Audit: Problems found in Bronx post offices”

Nor has the postal service historically been reliable at handling mail-in ballots on time. An IG report earlier this year looked at mail-voting in Wisconsin and found multiple problems. There were “three tubs of absentee ballots” sitting at a Milwaukee processing center on election day. Many ballots were returned to voters with no explanation, and 390 ballots got delivered without a postmark, making it impossible to know when they were mailed.

There is a crisis with the USPS and the 2020 election. But it’s not the one Democrats have been peddling.

In fact, this crisis is the fault of those very same Democrats – who have been pushing mail-in voting schemes since early this year without any consideration of the enormous impact it would have on the integrity of the November election.

Pelosi and company tried to get universal mail-in voting mandated nationwide as part of pandemic relief legislation. They have since been filing lawsuits in states across the nation to require mail-in ballots be sent to every voter and rules to prevent fraud lifted – despite the fact that there’s no more public health risk from voting in person than there is going to the grocery store or Home Depot

As we noted in this space earlier, the Democrats’ universal mail-in voting schemes will only enable voter fraud and create election chaos.

Blaming Trump for routine delays in the mail and spinning up grand Russia-gate style conspiracies was politically expedient. It offered a new line of attack for Democrats, and gave them a reason to contest the results should he win in November.

Now that DeJoy has called their bluff, who are they going to blame if they lose in November?

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board