The Rise And Fall of USPS and Mail-in Voting

  • USPS has been around for more than 200 years, but says it is close to being insolvent.
  • Laws requiring it to fund pensions for people it hasn’t even hired yet have hurt the post office’s ability to operate.
  • It’s likely to become a major issue this summer, as many voters may rely on it to cast their vote during the coronavirus pandemic.

Narrator: Every year, the United States Postal Service takes and delivers 142 billion mailed items. If it needs to go from point A to point B anywhere in the US, the post office can do it. It survived the Civil War, two world wars, the Great Depression, and the upheaval brought by the internet and email.

But it’s currently more than $160 billion in debt, and it’s telling Congress it will run out of cash by September and needs a $75 billion infusion. How did this happen?

The US Postal Service has been delivering mail since before the Declaration of Independence was even signed. In 1775, Benjamin Franklin was appointed postmaster general, and it was Franklin who handled the distribution of letters from Congress to its armies during the Revolutionary War. President George Washington signed the Postal Service Act, which authorized Congress to create the US Postal Service. This established routes and made it illegal to open anyone’s mail.

Clip: What matter if it took two weeks to go from New York to Atlanta, over a month to St. Louis? If the letter from Uncle Ben arrived a day or so later, nobody fussed.

Narrator: In 1823, it started using waterways to deliver mail, then began using railroads. 1847 saw the first issued stamps. And then the famed Pony Express debuted in 1860. In 1896, it began delivering to some rural addresses, meaning residents no longer had to go to the town post office to get their mail. By 1923, all houses were required to have a mail slot. And in 1963, zip codes made their debut.

Clip: What a system! As you can plainly see, just five little numbers, quick as can be.

Narrator: But what really transformed the post office into what we know today? That happened a few years later.

Clip: The post office stands to be swamped, overwhelmed, drowned in a sea of mail. Where do we go from here?

Narrator: In 1967, the postmaster general testified before Congress that the post office was in “a race with catastrophe.” There were all sorts of backlogs, and sorting-room floors were bursting with unsorted mail. Combined with a postal worker strike in March of 1970, led to the Postal Reorganization Act and established the United States Postal Service as we know it today.

Clip: The Post Office Department is leading the search for better ways to process and dispatch mail in the shortest time possible.

Narrator: The act eliminated the post office from the president’s cabinet and made the post office its own federal agency. It was set up more like a corporation than a government agency and had an official monopoly on the delivery of letter mail in the US. It also set up the elimination of the post office’s direct government subsidies, which were completely phased out in 1982. The post office has been operating without any taxpayer money since.

Competition from UPS and FedEx made the post office innovate on its offerings, like introducing express mail. But since its most lucrative service was first-class mail, the USPS didn’t have to worry too much about competing with other companies. In fact, the post office has partnered with both companies in the past, like when it signed a deal in 2000 that contracted its air delivery of first-class, priority, and express mail to FedEx.

So, basically, the USPS was fine. First-class mail volume peaked in 2001 at 103.6 billion pieces of mail. It operated at a loss in the first couple years of the 21st century, but by 2003, it was back to operating at a profit. In fact, from 2003 through 2006, USPS recorded a total $9.3 billion profit. That all changed at the end of 2006. Read the entire article here: Business Insider

BELOW IS OPINION FROM PEN

MAIL-IN VOTING

There is much discussion regarding mail-in voting at this time – opinion for and opinions against. I am a retired postal employee – retired in 2007. During my 35 year career I saw. and read, many instances of voting fraud via mail-in ballots. PEN is of the opinion that mail-in voting is not a good idea and would open the flood gates to possible voter fraud. Even some career postal employees just can’t resist on forcing their personal political views on others by obstructing or delaying mail-in ballots.

Just this week Thomas Cooper, a West Virginia postal employee, was charged by the Dept. of Justice for “Attempt to Defraud the Residents of West Virginia of a Fair Election” – DOJ charges state “the Clerk of Pendleton County received “2020 Primary Election COVID-19 Mail-In Absentee Request” forms from eight voters on which the voter’s party-ballot request appeared to have been altered.”

Cooper was responsible for the mail delivery of the three towns from which the tampered requests were mailed: Onego, Riverton, and Franklin, West Virginia. According to the affidavit, Cooper admitted to altering some of the requests, saying it was a joke. Joke or not Cooper’s actions were, and are, illegal.

We could list thousands of instances of mail-in voter fraud but we will not do that here. However, here are some media opinions regarding same.

Of course, the vast majority of media outlets are liberal and their report(s) will certainly be in favor of mail-in ballots and/or their articles will deny any possibility of mail-in voting fraud – but, it exists and we know it. So, if you can go the grocery store…you can go out to vote. That is our opinion – you are certainly entitled to yours.