going back to court to protect voting rights

[Public Citizen]

Big news today.

Public Citizen is taking legal action to prevent the Trump regime from weaponizing the United States Postal Service and preventing eligible voters from voting.

Here’s a bit of history for anyone who wasn’t getting our emails during Donald Trump’s first term:

• In July of 2020, the Republican mega-donor that Trump had installed as postmaster general announced a bunch of changes that resulted in substantial mail delays.

• All across the country — in small towns and big cities alike — folks went days or even weeks without mail service. They missed out on birthday cards and graduation announcements, letters from family members serving overseas, magazine subscriptions, and much, much more.

• People also missed even more important mail, like benefit checks and essential medicines.

• And because the changes were made during the pandemic, when more voters were relying on mail-in voting, the delays threatened to prevent timely delivery of untold numbers of ballots.

• Public Citizen — representing the NAACP and co-counseling with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund — sued.

• In that lawsuit, we made the case that the service disruptions instituted by Trump’s handpicked postmaster general should be suspended to restore prompt, reliable mail delivery and to ensure priority status for mail-in ballots (as had been the practice in past years).

• As a result of our lawsuit — including a preliminary injunction and emergency motions we fought for — the service disruptions were put on hold and there were minimal delays with mail-in ballots throughout the elections that November.

• We pressed forward with the lawsuit. In December of 2021, the Postal Service agreed to a series of critical measures to safeguard the delivery of mail-in ballots through the 2028 general election.

That brings us to this year.

On March 31, Trump — who wrongly believes that mail-in voting is rife with fraud (it is not) and inherently unfavorable for Republican candidates (also not) — issued an executive order directing the USPS to implement ludicrous rules for mail-in ballots that would disenfranchise countless eligible voters.

In essence, Trump wants the Postal Service to act as some kind of “election gatekeeper,” deciding who it will and will not deliver ballots to. This plan violates both the law and the settlement in our case.

So we have returned to that lawsuit, asking the court to enforce the settlement — which, again, the USPS agreed to and which requires it to prioritize the timely delivery of election mail to all voters without exception.

As Allison Zieve, the head of the legal team here at Public Citizen, put it, “Voting is fundamental to democracy. That the Trump administration would direct the Postal Service to adopt measures to impede voters from casting their ballots is shameful. And that the Postal Service would allow itself to be used for political purposes to advance the president’s irrational objection to mail-in voting is unlawful and contrary to the commitments it made to settle our lawsuit.”

We’ll keep you updated on how this case — and all of our lawsuits against the Trump regime — are going.

If you can, please donate today to support Public Citizen as we continue standing up to the Trump regime.

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- Lisa Gilbert & Robert Weissman, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen


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