Rebecca Slisher of Groveport, Ohio, holds a sign while rallying with others during a Save the Post Office Rally on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2020, in Whitehall, Ohio. (Joshua A. Bickel/The Columbus Dispatch via AP)
The current controversy over the U.S. Postal Service has brought out one clear point: America still depends on the mail.
Recently, President Donald Trump said he wasn’t interested in emergency funding for the Postal Service because he doesn’t want to aid vote-by-mail efforts. Ironically, Trump mailed in his own ballot for the Florida primaries last week.
Meanwhile, we have seen reports of significant mail delays, a problem postal workers and Democrats have attributed in part to operational changes imposed by Trump’s postmaster general, Louis DeJoy.
Under pressure, DeJoy announced last week that he was suspending Postal Service changes until after the election to “avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail,” but that hasn’t satisfied skeptics who want to know where mailboxes and missing Postal Service equipment are going to.
This is an issue that goes far beyond mail-in ballots, although that alone is enough for the nation to be deeply concerned about what is going on.
About 4.9% of prescriptions dispensed in 2019 came through the mail, Politico reports. That number almost certainly rose after the COVID-19 pandemic.
