www.BXTimes.com BRONX WEEKLY August 30, 2020 6
Biaggi sues Trump and USPS
Lawsuit aims to ensure postal service can handle mail-in voting this November
BY JASON COHEN
As postal boxes are being
removed from New York City
and a Trump donor is implementing
drastic changes to the
postal service, many are worried
about what this means
for mail-in voting during the
upcoming election.
President Donald Trump has
refused to give the postal service a
fi nancial boost, saying mail-in voting
would be catastrophic, which
has angered many people, including
Senator Alessandra Biaggi.
On Aug. 17 Biaggi and NY-17
Congressional Candidate Mondaire
Jones fi led a lawsuit against
the president, the USPS and Postmaster
General Louis DeJoy. The
lawsuit alleged that the defendants
had violated the constitution
and demanded that the court
grant an injunction and take all
steps necessary to ensure that the
USPS is adequately funded so that
there are no policies preventing
the delivery of election mail, provide
suffi cient staff and overtime
and treat mail in ballots as equal
to in-person ballots.
“Amid a global, once-in-a-century
pandemic, USPS has become
all the more important to the basic
functioning of our economy:
with the risks of gathering voters
in one place, indoors, to wait online
and all touch the same election
machinery, most states have
expanded vote by mail alternatives
to keep their citizens safe,”
the lawsuit stated. “Against this
background, President Donald J.
Trump and his newly appointed
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy
have set about to ensure USPS cannot
reliably deliver election mail.”
With the election just two and
half months away, the need for
mail-in voting is crucial due to
COVID-19.
“Changing the quality of
USPS services in the middle of
this election cycle will predictably
and irreparably harm everyone
involved, to say nothing
of the damage it will cause
to the integrity of the election
itself,” the lawsuit stated.
The lawsuit pointed out that all
Americans should be able to cast
their ballot to vote no matter where
they are. In fact, for the NYC June
23 Primary, the USPS delivered
30,000 absentee ballots to the Board
of Elections.
However, recent changes by
DeJoy have caused an outrage
throughout the country. These
changes include:
• keeping the mail for the next
day if plants run late eliminating
USPS overtime
• allowing carriers to only four
“park points” where a letter carrier
parks a truck, delivers some
amount of mail on foot and then returns
to the truck on their routes
• requiring carriers to return
from their mail routes on time even
if they have not fi nished their deliveries
• a USPS hiring freeze
• a new program called “Expedited
to Street/Afternoon Sortation,”
which sends letter carriers
out to deliver mail quicker in the
morning prohibiting them from
sorting before they go.
These new rules will drastically
impact the incoming election, as an
unprecedented 76 percent of Americans
can vote by mail. However,
since the fi ling of the lawsuit, De-
Joy announced these changes will
not take place until after the election.
“These are changes aimed at
changing the entire culture of the
USPS,” said the National President
of the Postal Workers Union Mark
Dimondstein. “The culture I grew
up with and generations before
me is that you never leave mail behind.”
Furthermore, these regulations
break with past USPS practices in
implementing changes, where in
the past it consulted unions and
industry groups prior to making
changes.
In fact, according to the lawsuit,
the USPS has removed or destroyed
671 sorting machines across the
country since June and plans to get
rid of more by the end of the year.
As of Aug. 14, the USPS capacity
to sort mail has been reduced
by more than 21.4 million pieces of
mail per hour.
President Trump has also been
involved in the process. Trump’s
Deputy Campaign Manager Justin
Clark said “The president
views vote by mail as a threat to
he election.”
Senator Biaggi
Photo via Biaggi4NY.com
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