Democrats have been repeatedly hammering the Trump administration over the need to expand the United States Postal Service, especially as the majority of states are moving to voting by mail for the November presidential election. President Trump has pushed back, saying there are flaws with the USPS. We have repeatedly seen issues, like not all ballots showing up or being postmarked.
In fact, the Left was upset that USPS would stop picking up mail from letter collection boxes in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, Alaska, Nebraska and small parts of Wisconsin and Missouri. According to a spokesperson for the western region of USPS, this won't be done until after the election.
Collection boxes were removed in New York, Oregon, Montana and Indiana last week. Post office hours in West Virginia, Florida and Missouri are being reduced as well, CNN reported.
Of course, Democrats think this is some conspiracy theory to undermine the election. But, as our friends at PJ Media noted, the removal of collection boxes is nothing new:
But the fact is the removal of mail collection boxes has been going on for years as part of cost-cutting efforts for the postal service and had nothing to do with the 2020 election.
In September 2016, the USPS inspector general noted that “Nationally, the number of collection boxes declined by more than 12,000 in the past 5 years.” This means that the USPS, during the Obama-Biden administration, removed thousands of mail collection boxes. Was this a diabolical plan by Obama and Biden to suppress the vote in 2020? Did Trump make them do it?
According to the USPS inspector general, collection boxes are eliminated when they're not being used because they're expensive to maintain. If a collection boxes has less than 25 pieces of mail per day, those are the boxes that are being eliminated.
Even though Democratic Sen. Jon Tester (MT) has called for an investigation into the collection box elimination, USPS spokesperson Kimberly Frum said this has been going on for decades. USPS frequently audits collection box usage.
"It is a fluid process and figures can vary from day-to-day. Historically, mail boxes have been removed for lack of use and installed in growth areas," Frum told The Hill. "When a collection box consistently receives very small amounts of mail for months on end, it costs the Postal Service money in fuel and workhours for letter carriers to drive to the mailbox and collect the mail. Removing the box is simply good business sense in that respect. It is important to note that anyone with a residential or business mailbox can use it as a vehicle to send outgoing mail.”
Instead of acting like this is a new phenomenon, Democrats would be wise to do a little bit of research. This is about usage – or the lack thereof – not about election results.