The United States Postal Service has warned on Saturday that millions of mail-in votes may not arrive in time for the count on the presidential election day, November 3. Last month, in letters to the states across the country, the agency maintained that certain deadlines are incongruous with their delivery standards.
Due to the pandemic outbreak in the country, many people are expected to use the postal ballot for the presidential election. However, on Thursday, Trump said that he was halting the additional funding to the national postal agency to help fix the election issues, primarily because he opposed the mail-in voting.
Trump has continuously maintained that the postal ballots will lead to vote fraud and eventually help his Democratic rival, Joe Biden. However, political experts have asserted that the mail-in ballots by the US postal service, which is often used by the American army and President himself, is reasonably safe from tempering.
More
- Twitter Tags Trump’s Mail-In Ballots Tweet With Fact-Checking warning
- Trump Signs Executive Order Targeting Twitter After Fact-Checking Row
Meanwhile, the former president Barrack Obama has described this as Trump’s efforts to undermine the upcoming presidential election. He took to Twitter and wrote that the incumbent administration is more interested in suppressing the vote rather than suppressing the coronavirus outbreak across the US.
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the US Congress’s two senior Democrats, called on the president to stop his unjustified assault on the postal ballots and allow the November’s presidential election to proceed without his tactics to sabotage the process.
This comes as a recent poll found that nearly three-quarters of the Republican voters are planning to cast their vote in person, while more than half of the Democratic Party supporters plan to use a postal ballot.
Meanwhile, private mail services, including UPS and FedEx, have both rejected calls to ease pressure on the US Postal Service. It has long been under financial pressure and carries a huge debt in July sent letters to the states across the US, warning that it could not guarantee that all the votes would arrive on time for the count.
According to a local news channel, nearly 15 states have received the letters. In its letter to the state of Pennsylvania, the agency said that the mail-in ballots requested one week before the election, may not reach their destination on time, stating that its deadlines are too tight for its delivery standards.
Thomas Marshall, the General Counsel of USPS, said that a mismatch between the state laws and mail delivery systems creates a risk that ballots requested under the state law will not reach in time to be counted.
On Thursday, the letter was made public as Kathy Boockvar, the Secretary of State, asked the states’ Apex court to allow the mail ballots to be counted as long as they are received three days after the election. Though, currently, the votes are not counted if they are received after the polling day.
In the 2016 Presidential election, Trump received one percent in the state of Pennsylvania, which is a battleground state.
