The recent news that the postmaster general is a major Trump donor and has been undermining the US Postal Service in advance of a presidential election has one Bronx elected official furious.
Councilman Fernando Cabrera chairs the City Council’s Committee on Governmental Operations, which oversees the New York City Board of Elections. His office received numerous complaints from people who never received their June 23 primary election mail-in ballots or got them late. He subsequently learned from the Board of Elections that the ballots’ post mark was extremely tardy, implicating the USPS.
On Friday, he submitted a resolution calling on the state legislature and Governor Andrew Cuomo to pass legislation that would require mail in ballots for November’s election to be sent out an additional 30 days in advance of the 42- day period.
“The June primary was just a ‘dry run’ for the disaster that is clearly being devised for the November presidential election,” Cabrera said. “Now we know why so many New Yorkers either did not receive ballots or received them too late for them to be counted. Trump’s postmaster general, who has a background in logistics and has slashed the US Postal Service budget, is part of the machinery that will dismantle democracy in the United States, and I’m calling for his removal.”
Cabrera told the Bronx Times that the way the postal service is being run is ludicrous. Cutting the sorting machines off early and not allowing the employees to work overtime is absurd, he said.
He noted that the congressional race involving Carolyn Maloney and her challenger Suraj Patel is still missing thousands of mail-in ballots.
Cabrera stressed the BOE did its job and he put the blame entirely at the feet of the USPS.
“The post office utterly failed,” he said. “The reality is the BOE did everything they were supposed to.”
With the need to social distance because of COVID-19 and the election in November, the councilman urged the legislature to take action on his resolution within the month,
Cabrera said he would love to see online voting, but that’s a conversation for another day.
“The fault lies at the top, and the top is the executive branch of the United States government,” Cabrera said. “The evidence is clear that Trump is using the USPS to manipulate the upcoming election by engineering its demise. This must be stopped at all levels. We have to safeguard our local elections and our voters from political manipulation.”
