GREENSBORO, N.C. — New policies at the post office have been postponed. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy of Greensboro had recently started some cost-cutting measures, such as removing mail sorting machines and mailboxes.
Democrats accused him of trying to undermine mail-in voting for the November election. DeJoy is now backing down on his new policies, saying he wants to avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail. He issued a full statement on Tuesday.
Dr. Martin Kifer, a Political Science professor at High Point University, says there's a relatively long-standing debate about how the US Postal Service does its job, and what its future will be.
But the potential for cuts and closures during a presidential election year, in the midst of a pandemic sparked a nationwide uproar.
"The general climate right now involving the pandemic is that people are on edge about a lot of different things, so I think that we see that play out a lot in different ways in our politics and in our policies," said Kifer, "People are expressing anxiety and are looking very, very closely at everything that is going on."
Kifer says the scrutiny comes as evidence points to more people relying on the Post Office to vote in the upcoming November election. But even in years past, elections and the mail, he says, have always been closely linked.
"The Postal Service is absolutely crucial," he said, "If it's not a close election, then it may not matter as much. But, I think that there is the anticipation in place is like here in North Carolina, that you will have a considerable number of really close races, where it will matter whether or not the mail is working well to get the ballots where they need to go."
DeJoy will testify next Monday before Congress. He operated a logistics company in High Point for decade, and he's also been a major donor to President Trump, before his appointment to Postmaster General.
