On Thursday, Donald Trump doubled down on United States Postal Service hate rhetoric fueled by false claims. In conversation with Fox Business Network, he reportedly called USPS funding “election money,” aka money that allows for more people to vote, aka a thing the dude isn’t keen on facilitating apparently.
“They want $25 billion for the post office. Now, they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” he said. “If we don’t make a deal,” he says referring to the ongoing debate and effort to finalize a new stimulus 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.”
The U.S. president continues to bash the idea of mail-in voting, or a process that allows for greater access to voting from home, claiming it invites fraud—an idea that experts have shut down again and again and again.
Prior to the pandemic, five states—Oregon, Hawaii, Washington, Utah and Colorado—already conducted mail-in ballots. Since May, states like California also made that their primary way of voting come November. That being said “universal mail-in voting,” which Trump continues to bring up, is not a thing (yet). There are reportedly only eight states that are mailing ballots to all registered, active voters.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, on the other hand, is not at all opposed to the idea and took the opportunity to expand on how this assault on the already struggling USPS affects more than just the election process.
“The president of the United States is sabotaging a basic service that hundreds of millions of people rely upon,” Biden’s spokesperson said, according to NPR. “[He wants to cut] a critical lifeline for rural economies and for delivery of medicines, because he wants to deprive Americans of their fundamental right to vote safely during the most catastrophic public health crisis in over 100 years—a crisis so devastatingly worsened by his own failed leadership that we are now the hardest-hit country in the world by the coronavirus pandemic.”
You can check to see if you’re registered to vote here and make an absentee ballot request here. Absentee voting allows you to vote by mail; rules on who can take part vary and may differ due to the coronavirus pandemic.