When will SD's reps in D.C. say something sane about funding the U.S. Postal Service? Trump got your tongues, gentlemen?
The nuttiness from the White House continues unabated, with President Trump now targeting the United States Postal Service. His beef with USPS? That it will use the money it seeks to deliver "millions and millions of ballots." The President seems convinced that mail-in voting is a Democratic scheme to stuff the ballot boxes with illegitimate votes. His proof? Nobody knows . . . and neither does Trump.
Massive fraud just doesn't seem realistic considering that the United States contains about 3,000 counties, each one of them having a unique ballot that contains local election issues. The whole idea that an undertaking big enough to mess with that many different ballots on a massive scale is hard enough to swallow in the first place. Then there’s this: denying mail service to voters has to be just as punishing to Republicans as it is to Democrats and others. Trevor Potter, the former Republican chair of the Federal Election Commission, today told National Public Radio that "Trump's brazen abuse of the post office to try and win an election is a shameful misuse of presidential power" and that "defunding the Postal Service and slowing its ability to deliver mail ballots to Americans will hurt Democratic and Republican voters alike."
More to the point as far as South Dakotans are concerned - are you paying attention SD Sens. John Thune and Mike Rounds, and SD Rep. Dusty Johnson? - your party leader President Trump wants to punish an agency that is so much a part of rural life in your state of South Dakota that those of us who live or have business in small rural towns probably couldn't manage without it. You know darn well that the local post office in just about every rural community in this state is a gathering spot for local and country residents who depend on the mail service for information, medications and their only venue for getting their business done.
Cutting back on USPS services just to drive a political agenda is heartless. Somebody needs to stand up for South Dakotans who have for generations depended on the Postal Service. Many of them just don't have the means or the knowhow to conduct business with private carriers or online.
Just as relevant is the craziness of Trump's contention that mail-in voting is susceptible to widespread fraud. No doubt some isolated cases exist, but widespread fraud? Show me. The BBC did a nice recap of studies on the subject last month and turned up the following: 1) the rate of voting fraud overall in the US is between 0.00004% and 0.0009%, according to a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice. 2) A voter fraud database collated by Arizona State University between 2000 and 2012, found 491 cases of postal ballot fraud out of hundreds of millions of votes. 3) A Washington Post review of the 2016 election found one proven case of postal voting fraud. 4) Oregon has held postal elections since 2000 and has only reported 14 fraudulent votes attempted by mail.
I've scoured the internet looking for data supporting Trump's claim that there is mail-in voter fraud in this country, but all I find are isolated instances that are probably statistically meaningless. I invite readers to send me some data that show otherwise.
Meantime, I invite our all-GOP congressional delegation to speak up on this. Is cutting back on basic, essential postal service for your constituents worth your silence, which is effectively assent, in the face of President Trump's politically paranoid efforts to quash voting in November?
