By Emma Almanza
Staff Writer
The Postal service is an important part of our society, we depend on it immensely to pay our bills, get our products, and deliver our messages. Now with the ongoing pandemic, it is needed more than ever. Due to the upcoming election, mail-in voting has now become an essential service for citizens, but it may be at risk.
In early April President Donald Trump began and still is making claims that mail-in voting is not secure. Trump did not provide any evidence that supports these claims. During an interview with CNN, Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff, defended Trump’s claims on voting fraud stating that “there’s no evidence that there’s not, either” after news anchor Jake Tapper insisted that there’s no evidence of in mail voting fraud. It has been proven that mail-in voting is secure because of the unique barcodes that are used to track individual ballots. This means that there is only one authorized ballot per person and that citizens can track their ballots status.
On August 13, 2020 President Trump admitted to the Los Angeles Times that he was blocking funding to the postal service in order to undercut voting by mail, bringing panic to many U.S. citizens. The post office requires around $25 million in additional funding in order to provide universal mail-in voting. Without this money, people won’t have the ability to cast mail votes. Trump refused to give the USPS the money or include it any deal due to his fear that it would not be a fair election.
Chart credits: www..Statistica.com
In an interview with Fox News, the President stated “Now they need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all these millions and millions of ballots. Now if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail in voting, they just can’t have it”.
Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the United States House of Representatives and a leader of the Democratic party, in an attempt to save mail-in voting, voted on a bill to boost USPS funding and halt organizational changes. The bill passed the House with over two dozen Republicans joining Democrats in approving the bill.
There is still a lot of uncertainty as to what will happen during the election, but as of now only certain states are allowing mail-in voting without restrictions. Trump is still making efforts to take away a right the U.S has had issue free for years.