A United States Postal Service (USPS) worker wearing a mask delivers mail during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York on April 13, 2020. /Xinhua
Editor's note: Chris Hawke is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a journalist who has reported for over two decades from Beijing, New York, the United Nations, Tokyo, Bangkok, Islamabad and Kabul for AP, UPI and CBS. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds – but the president might.
U.S. President Donald Trump is now trying to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service to obstruct mail-in balloting.
This may be viewed as a form of corruption on a historic scale, but so far Republicans have been mostly silent on the issue.
The president has been making the unfounded claim for months that mail-in ballots will lead to massive fraud in November's election, which polls show that he and his fellow Republicans will lose by historic margins.
On August 13, Trump shocked pundits by spelling out explicitly what Democrats have been accusing him of for weeks – he is starving the post office of money to disrupt voting.
"[The Democrats] need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots," Trump said in a televised interview. Referring to post office funding and federal money to help states conduct elections amid the epidemic, Trump said, "If [the Democrats] don't get those two items, [then] that means you can't have universal mail-in voting because they're not equipped to have it."
On the surface, this appears to be another Republican effort at voter suppression. The GOP has long pushed for measures such as limits on early voting, purging voter rolls, closing poll locations in poor areas and voter ID requirements, in order to make voting difficult for poor people and groups more likely to support Democrats, such as the African Americans.
Indeed, Trump has said of universal mail-in balloting, automatic voter registration and other measures favored by Democrats, "If you'd ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again."
However, both Republicans and Democrats vote by mail, and it is not clear that restricting mail-in ballots would help either party.
A Virginia resident fills out an application to vote by mail ahead of the November presidential election, in Arlington, Virginia, the U.S., on August 6, 2020. /AFP
Rather, it appears that Trump is trying to discredit the election in advance to make it easier for him to challenge the results afterward.
Just as Trump has attacked and diminished the prestige of the news media, congress, intelligence services, and the courts, he is now undermining faith in the electoral system.
It is difficult to imagine a U.S. president refusing to cede power. However, Trump plainly stated he may do this in a televised interview with Fox's Chris Wallace in July, "I have to see. No, I'm not going to just say yes. I'm not going to say no, and I didn't last time either."
Trump installed loyalist Louis DeJoy as postmaster general in May. DeJoy immediately restructured the organization and imposed a hiring freeze and cost-cutting measures that have already caused significant mail backlogs.
Trump has claimed he would have won the popular vote in the 2016 election, as well as the electoral college, were it not for massive voter fraud. This is a baseless claim that he has never produced any evidence for, despite setting up a commission to investigate the matter that dissolved without producing a report.
Voting by mail is well established and common in the United States. With the threat of COVID-19, it is expected to be even more popular this year than ever.
The epidemic has torpedoed Trump's chances of re-election, both by tanking the once-strong economy, and also due to the president's inexplicably incompetent response.
No one can really be sure why the president let the virus spread through the U.S. and actively impeded any serious efforts to stop its spread, such as wearing masks.
The simplest explanation would be that he did not want to slow down the booming economy at any cost. However, letting the virus spread unchecked is doing more harm to the economy than controlling it in the first place.
Perhaps the president simply doesn't think the government's place is to waste resources on protecting the weak. At any rate, he has given new meaning to the phrase, "Give me liberty or give me death."
Trump's electoral opponent Joe Biden said in April that Trump would "try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can't be held."
And in fact, Trump tweeted on July 30, "Delay the election until people can properly, securely and safely vote?" Republicans uncharacteristically forcefully and quickly rejected this suggestion.
With Trump's constant efforts to undermine and cast doubt on the electoral process, Americans should hope for a clear and decisive result on November 3. Otherwise, the country may face a constitutional crisis that makes the 2000 hanging chad debacle look like a tea party.
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