The President of the United States Wants to Steal the Election

The President of the United States is openly attempting to steal the upcoming election. In extraordinary comments to Fox Business News on Thursday, August 13, 2020, he plainly stated that he is blocking legislation to provide the United States Postal Service (USPS) with $25 million in emergency funding because they need that money to process the millions and millions of mail-in ballots. He has installed flunky and donor, Louis DeJoy, as the Postmaster General. Under the direction of the president, Mr. DeJoy has stopped all overtime pay and is removing mail sorting machines from post offices and mailboxes from street corners countrywide. His actions are now being reviewed by the USPS Inspector General for violations of federal ethics rules. 

I wish this was one of those times where "if we couldn't laugh we would all go insane", (thanks to Jimmy Buffett for that line) but we just can't laugh, even in a hysterical, terrified, head-in-hands, way. This is election interference and it is the hallmark of dictators, not presidents. Mr. Trump and his entire administration present a clear and present danger to the United States, and to the world, and he must be stopped. Congress, specifically the Senate, must stand up and do their jobs. If it means defying Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, then so be it. Figure it out. Make it happen. Mr. McConnell's love of power allows him to justify all of his previous, present, and future actions. If this were happening anywhere else we would be screaming about unfair elections. It would be all over the news, with Congresspeople making impassioned speeches about democracy and free, fair elections. But, now that it's happening here, its all quiet on the western front. Not a peep from any Republican Congresspeople. We the people see you for what you are, spineless, cowards unwilling to stand up to this bastion of dictatorship and ruling by fiat.

Mr. Trump isn't even trying to hide his actions. We all assumed Russia, voting machine issues, or voter suppression, were going to be the biggest problems with this election. Who even had destroying the USPS on their 2020 election interference bingo card? I sure didn't. We all knew he hated the Postal Service because of his long-running, and one-sided, feud with Jeff Bezos, but I don't think any of us thought he had the intellectual capability to be this Machiavellian. This is not the ham-fisted approach Mr. Trump normally favors in his attacks. His choice to play politics with an institution older than the United States itself belies his views of America as nothing more than a tool to nourish his fragile ego. 

At an August 14, 2020 press briefing, Mr. Trump said he'd be willing to sign over the money for USPS if Democratic Congresspeople would make some concessions. In the same briefing, he said that he would not "sit down with Democrats" because "They want $1 trillion to go their friends doing a bad job running certain cities and states."

Mr. Trump's insistence that mail-in voting is new, and rife with fraud, are unfounded, though delays in vote totals did happen in some 2020 primary elections. According to an article by Reuters, nearly one in four Americans voted by mail in the 2016 presidential election. Members of the Armed Services and the diplomatic corps have been using mail-in voting for years. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, found fourteen instances of attempted mail fraud out of roughly 15.5 million ballots cast in Oregon since that state started conducting elections by mail in 1998. 

We need to protect the United States Postal Service. In addition to it being a vital part of a fair election during this pandemic, it plays a huge role in our country's infrastructure. Americans hold their country in high regard, an example of the values the rest of the world should aspire to. Actions such as this undercut our democracy, the very thing we hold most dear. 

Former president Barack Obama said it best in a tweet sent on August 14, 2020, 

"Everyone depends on the USPS. Seniors for their Social Security, veterans for their prescriptions, small businesses trying to keep their doors open. They can't be collateral damage for an administration more concerned with suppressing the vote than suppressing a virus."

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Katy Ferry is a writer, former expatriate, and Southerner living in Washington, DC with a husband, two daughters and an old fat basset hound who can be found on Twitter, Instagram and her very in-progress website, katyferrywrites.com.