Postal Crisis Ripples Across Nation as Election Looms
DARBY, Pa. — Each day, when Nick Casselli, president of a Philadelphia postal workers union, sits down at his desk on Main Street in the historic town of Darby, where trolley cars still run and the post office is a source of civic pride, his phone is full of alarmed messages about increasing delays in mail delivery.
Casselli and his 1,600 members have been in a state of high alert since Louis DeJoy, a Republican megadonor and an ally of President Donald Trump, took over as postmaster general in May. Overtime was eliminated, prompting backups. Seven mail-sorting machines were removed from a nearby processing center in West Philadelphia, causing further delays. Now post offices are being told to open later and close during lunch.
“I have some customers banging on my people’s doors: ‘Open up!’” Casselli said. “I’ve never seen that in my whole 35-year postal career.”
Similar accounts of slowdowns and curtailed service are emerging across the country as DeJoy pushes cost-cutting measures he says are intended to overhaul an agency suffering billion-dollar losses. But as Trump rails almost daily against the service and delays clog the mail, voters and postal workers warn a crisis is building that could disenfranchise record numbers of Americans who will be casting ballots by mail in November because of the coronavirus.
https://news.yahoo.com/postal-crisis-ripples-across-nation-160241436.html
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