By mid-August, reports are surfacing around the country of letter sorting machines and drop boxes disappearing around the country. It’s unclear when Postmaster General Louis DeJoy ordered the changes.
Letter sorting machines speed up mail processing by making sure United States Postal Service employees don’t have to sort all incoming mail by hand. It’s estimated that one letter sorting machine can do in one day what would otherwise take 30 USPS employees working a full time shift.
Over 700 letter sorting machines are removed by the end of August. That’s twice as many as previous years, when machines were only removed for repairs or to be replaced.
The majority of mail sorting slowdowns are focused in communities with a large left-leaning population.
In many cases, these are the same machines that would be tasked with sorting ballots, calling into question promises made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that the USPS has “ample capacity” to handle the predicted surge in mail-in ballots…
Even to local union officials, USPS has not announced any policy, explained why they are doing this, what will happen to the machines and the workers who use them.
Vice
Drop boxes are posted outside USPS locations, around cities, and in areas of suburban and country communities. Without drop boxes, Americans without access to travel are unable to vote by mail.
DeJoy goes even further, removing boxes from directly outside USPS locations in downtown areas. This will force voters who can’t mail letters from home to wait in crowded, unsafe lines to send their ballots — the exact reason many will choose mail-in voting in this election.
Some post boxes are locked from the front rather than being removed. Most Americans are unaware there is a small slot in the back of these boxes to insert mail through.
A USPS official says on August 15 that the boxes will stop being removed (but they won’t be put back). In court testimony, a USPS official says DeJoy orders the letter sorting machine removals to stop on August 18, but local papers continue to report that machines are being removed through the end of August, possibly later.
Sources
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wk9z/the-post-office-is-deactivating-mail-sorting-machines-ahead-of-the-election
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/08/15/USPS-halts-removal-of-collection-boxes/6571597493780/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/13/politics/postal-service-sorting-machines/index.html
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/515790-court-documents-show-postal-service-removed-711-mail-sorting
https://www.twincities.com/2020/08/26/20-mail-sorting-machines-in-mn-being-decommissioned-10-already-offline-says-lawsuit/
https://www.newsweek.com/brand-new-mail-sorting-machine-thrown-out-usps-center-leaving-workers-sorting-hand-1527484
Photo: Howard J
