2020 is an election year, one of the most important events in the United States, as we will be picking our next president. Due to COVID-19 leading to quarantining,  stay at home orders, and social distancing voting will have to change to a different platform, and the one that has been chosen this year is mail-in ballots. 

President Donald J. Trump has spoken on numerous occasions on how mail-in ballots can be rigged, even saying that they are “‘one of the greatest frauds in history.” This has led to some theories on whether or not he will accept the mail-in voting results, and things became even more intense when Trump’s known ally Louis Dejoy was appointed Postmaster General in June.

Postmaster Dejoy, in the week of August 17 2020, made the decision to remove 671 of the mail sorting machines from the postal service. Out of all the machines, the most important one is the Delivery BarCode Sorter. These machines do almost all the envelope sorting for the USPS which includes the ballots being sent out to voters. These machines can sort hundreds of thousands of envelopes per hour, and, without them, mail would be forced to be sorted by workers leading to a delay in mail delivery for months. Some citizens fear that they may not get their ballots until after the election time has passed.

 “The Democrats have abandoned the people” according to Trump. He said he won’t support their radical leftist ideas, therefore he won’t be giving them the $3.5 billion they have asked for to do universal mall-in-voting. This has led to many rumors floating around that Dejoy made the decision to remove the machines supposably to “ save on costs” but he really removed them to help in Trump in his dislike for Mail in voting, Dejoy addressed these rumors by telling lawmakers “ I am not engaged with sabotaging the election” as well as Trump who has denied these rumors by telling the press he has not spoken to Dejoy in weeks. This was later dismantled by the White House officials who stated that Trump had a meeting with Dejoy on August 5.

If mail in voting is hindered by the controversies surrounding the postal service at the moment the U.S may have very low voter turnout from citizens not wanting to expose themselves to the pandemic in crowded polls. Due to Covid-19 and all the other implications 2020 has brought this election year we’ll be differently be very different then the past years.