HOUSTON - Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan has joined a friend of the court brief in a lawsuit seeking to stop massive changes in the operation of the U.S. Postal Service that could impact voting in the November general election.
Ryan is filing the brief along with more than 30 local and tribal governments supporting challenges brought by state attorneys general to changes to U.S. Postal Service policies. These entities are seeking an injunction from the court to stop these changes.
“Governments like Harris County depend on the Postal Service in many ways to enable us to conduct free and fair elections,” said Ryan. “The changes implemented by the Postmaster General will hinder local governments’ ability to ensure everyone’s vote counts.”
A press release states the dependence on reliable Postal Service mail delivery has taken on even greater significance over the past six months due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with many government offices closed, in-person staffing significantly reduced and residents encouraged to limit in-person contacts with people outside of their households. Not only are elections impacted; so are essential government functions such as collecting fees and taxes, sending pension payments, and enforcing local ordinances.
“By slowing mail delivery and reducing the availability of mail services in certain areas, these changes hamper local governments’ ability to execute their core governmental functions at a time when communities need services more than ever,” the brief states.
The brief points out that local governments rely on the Postal Service at nearly every point in the election administration process. However, the recent significant changes to USPS policies and operations—including restricting operating hours and extra delivery trips, delaying mail processing and sorting, and changing election mail classifications and charges—will impede local governments’ ability to: (1) send and receive requests for vote-by-mail, absentee, replacement, emergency, military, and overseas ballots; (2) regularly update and maintain voter registration rolls; (3) conduct voter outreach and education, including distribution of voter information guides; and (4) enable voters to timely address vote-by-mail ballot deficiencies.
The Postal Service recently sent letters to 46 states and the District of Columbia stating that its newly-instituted operational delays will slow election-related mail, even indicating that some ballots requested close to state deadlines are unlikely to arrive in time to be counted.
In addition, the USPS’s longstanding practice had been to treat all election mail as First Class mail, which means election mail receives priority and is typically delivered between two and five days after mailing. Now, USPS has announced that election mail will instead be treated as standard mail, with delivery timeframes between three and ten days and possibly more when mail volumes are unusually high such as during the winter holidays. As a result, local governments may need to pay approximately 35 cents more per piece of election mail to ensure it is treated as First Class mail—a significant cost and logistical change with little time to locate funds.
“In the middle of a worldwide pandemic with a presidential election in less than two months, now is not the time to cut back on essential postal services,” said Ryan. “Local governments’ reliance on the U.S. Postal Service is more critical now than ever.”