EDITORIAL: Should the post office decide if your vote is counted?

The president of the United States is not allowed to interfere in the operation of the United States Postal Service. The current president believes he is an exception to that rule.

The USPS operates under the auspices of the federal government but is managed by an independent board of governors that appoints the postmaster general and is not subject to the control of the president or Congress.

Nonetheless, in March, President Donald Trump ordered the postal service to make a fundamental change in the service it provides to the public.

If the president felt a need to influence the operation of the postal service, it might have been expected he would use his bully pulpit to call on the agency to improve mail service that has been deteriorating in direct proportion to the rise in postage rates.

But, no, the president ordered the USPS to stop delivering some of the most important mail it handles. His mandate bars the postal service from delivering mail-in ballots in states that refuse to turn voter lists, including the personal information of voters, over to the Trump administration.

If the order stands, it is almost certain the mail-in ballots of Wisconsin voters would not be delivered, and therefore not counted, in the fall midterm elections and beyond. Wisconsin is one of the more than 20 states that so far have refused to comply with the Trump administration’s demand for voter information.

Postmaster General David Steiner, a Trump ally, has said the USPS will comply with Trump’s demand if it is allowed by courts. The mandate, though recently upheld by a federal appeals court, remains blocked by other litigation.

The White House meddling in the postal service is not motivated by a sudden interest in how the nation’s mail is delivered. Rather, it is a maneuver to give the administration authority over voting in the states. It is designed to give the president some of what he has been unable to get from the SAVE Act, a law he proposed to grant the political appointees of the executive branch control over state voting through onerous voter-ID requirements.

The bill is so contrary to provisions in the Constitution that give states authority over elections that the Republican-controlled Senate has refused to pass it.

Blaming mail-in voting for his defeat in the 2020 election is a familiar feature of the president’s obsession with his claim that he was denied victory by voter fraud—a fantasy that has been well and truly debunked by courts in every state where voting has been challenged by election deniers.

Beyond his run-around involving the USPS, Trump has called for a national ban on mail voting, which would dissuade or disenfranchise tens of millions of voters. More than 30% of Americans voted by mail in the 2024 election. In that year’s presidential election in Wisconsin (in which Trump outpolled Joe Biden), more than 40% of the votes were cast by mail.

Mail-in voting is a necessity for members of the military and other Americans living out of the country, as well as for infirm and homebound voters. For other voters, it is an option to do their democratic duty without the difficulty or inconvenience of traveling to polling places and without the pressure of making candidate choices while a line of voters wait their turn. If voter participation is important to a representative government—and it certainly is—voting by mail is a source of a democracy’s strength.

Election clerks follow stringent security procedures in mailing absentee ballots to qualified voters and vetting returned ballots. Under Trump’s delivery rule, mail carriers would in effect have the power to overrule their decisions.

The Constitution specifies that state legislatures have the responsibility to set “the times, places and manner” of federal elections.

If the mail-in ballot delivery regulation stands, the USPS would be usurping that power by making decisions determining which absentee ballots can be sent and delivered. The national postal service has no business getting involved in this management of voter data and, in any case, does not have the expertise or the means to handle it.

It’s up to federal courts to put a permanent stop to this, but the USPS board of governors should act on its own by instructing the postmaster general to get out of election politics and do his job—just deliver the mail.