Supreme Court makes final decision on mail-in ballots
Mailboxes in Omaha, Neb., Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020. The Postmaster general announced Tuesday he is halting some operational changes to mail delivery that critics warned were causing widespread delays and could disrupt voting in the November election. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said he would "suspend" his initiatives until after the election "to avoid even the appearance of impact on election mail." (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
With less than a week until Election Day, the Supreme Court made a final ruling on mail-in ballots. On Monday night, Oct. 26, the Supreme Court voted against reinstating an order by a Wisconsin federal court judge. saying absentee ballots could be counted if received within six days after the election as long as they were postmarked by Election Day. The final vote was 5-3.
Wisconsin is one of 30 states that require absentee ballots be received by Election Day to be counted. According to AP News, a federal district judge previously concluded the deadline violated Wisconsin voters' rights in light of the coronavirus pandemic, and agreed to extend it by six days, until November 9.
A Chicago-based federal appeals court then blocked the judge's order, saying it violated Supreme Court precedent by changing state election rules too close to an election. This decision led to the Supreme Court’s ruling, in which justices agreed with the appeals court.
Voting by mail has been widely discussed leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
In August, President Donald Trump requested to pull funding for the United States Postal Service. This announcement resulted in widespread disagreement on the topic, especially with the upcoming presidential election relying heavily on mail-in ballots.
Trump claims the USPS requested “three and a half billion dollars for something that'll turn out to be fraudulent,” referring to mail-in ballots, a segment of services offered by the USPS.
When Congress created the Postal Service to replace the old Post Office Department, it mandated the new agency to support itself through its own revenues, rather than relying on federal funds. According to the Pew Research Center, however, the last year the Postal Service recorded any profit was in 2006, and its cumulative losses since then totaled $83.1 billion.
According to the Federal News Network, without federal funding, the “USPS now estimates it will run out of cash in April 2021, if package volumes return to pre-COVID levels. If, however, package volume stays 15% above pre-pandemic COVID levels, the agency says it would run out of cash in October 2021.”
Senior Psychology major Abby Bagley, an employee at the Lee University post office, stressed the importance of federal funding for the USPS. Without this funding, the USPS will have no funds left to pay its employees or process everyday orders.
Bagley said the campus post office has not yet been impacted by this financial change. According to Bagley, the campus post office is still receiving their usual intake of mail from USPS and bigger package carriers like FedEx and UPS.
Photo by Rhianna Barrow
Shipping and packaging services have doubled over the past decade, to nearly 6.2 billion pieces last year. According to the Pew Research Center, most of the agency’s shipping and packaging offerings are considered “competitive” services, meaning the Postal Service has more leeway to set rates in line with what it thinks the market will bear.
Since the Trump administration announced its intent to defund the USPS, there have been many public outcries. Groups such as the American Postal Workers Union (A.P.W.U.), which represents more than 200,000 postal workers and retirees, have expressed their desires to expand what services the post office can offer as a way to help plug the financial gap and help support local communities.
According to the New York Times, it is a trend on social media to save, or at least support, the USPS by shopping from a wide variety of goods on its online store.
Bagley also stressed the importance of sending letters to loved ones through the postal service - especially during a global pandemic.
In her time working for the Lee University Post Office, Bagley noticed how important this line of communication is.
“Students get more excited when they get mail from someone rather than when they’re just picking up their amazon order,” said Bagley.
Because of this, Bagley encourages students to continue sending mail to one another. In addition to mail from loved ones, Bagley stresses how important USPS is in student’s day to day lives.
Without the USPS, students would not be able to receive paper copies of important things such as paychecks, bills, tax information or mail-in ballots.
To maintain social distancing guidelines, mail-in voting has been a frequently discussed option this year. With election day less than a week away, concerns are mounting that the USPS lacks the bandwidth to process the historic number of mail-in ballots.
Anna Shand, News Editor, contributed to this article.
