US Postal Service defends plan to require states to disclose mail voting lists
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) – The head of the U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday defended a plan requested by President Donald Trump that would require states to provide lists of voters who received mail-in ballots.
U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner told a hearing before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that under the proposal, the USPS would not deliver ballots in states where officials refuse to comply.
“The proposed rule basically forces states to comply with these new requirements and turn in absentee voter lists or face the consequences of not being able to vote by mail,” said Sen. Gary Peters, the committee’s top Democrat. “This is unacceptable.”
Steiner argued that the plan would be more efficient and mirror what many states are currently doing. USPS makes sure “the ballots a state believes it sent match those that were actually sent.”
The proposal would require states to provide USPS with the names and barcodes associated with mail-in ballots for federal elections. States will also be required to provide unique bar codes applied to outgoing and returned ballot envelopes, which it says will “help determine compliance with federal law and facilitate law enforcement efforts.”
All 47 Democratic senators wrote a letter to the Postal Service on Wednesday, urging the agency to withdraw the plan and calling it “an unconstitutional and illegal attempt to turn the USPS into an election administration agency controlled by the White House and President Trump.”
Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin said Steiner was a “pawn” in Trump’s obsession with taking over the election. “You are being used by President Trump,” Slotkin said. “He doesn’t believe the elections he lost were valid elections.”
The proposed regulation stems from Trump’s March executive order aimed at severely restricting mail-in voting, which he said was prone to fraud without providing evidence.
Last week, a U.S. judge said Democratic-led states and voting rights groups could proceed with lawsuits challenging the vote-by-mail order.
Trump’s order directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile and transmit to states a list of U.S. citizens certified as eligible to vote in each state, obtained from citizenship and naturalization records and other federal databases.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Rod Nickel)
