Postmaster General David Steiner admitted Wednesday that he wants a rule allowing his agency to block mail-in ballots from states that refuse to hand over their voter rolls.
The concession came under questioning from Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing — one ostensibly about the U.S. Postal Service’s finances but quickly consumed by a bigger question: whether President Donald Trump has turned the mail service into a weapon against democracy.
“He has tried every which way to say that if he and his party don’t win in these November elections, they were rigged,” Slotkin told Steiner. “It’s just another backdoor way of trying to influence this election.”
She pressed him on a simple question: if a 60-year-old woman in Grayling, Michigan, drops her primary ballot in a mailbox after June 25, will USPS deliver it?
“I don’t have to direct the Postal Service to do that because we do that every day,” Steiner replied. “That is exactly what we do.”
“So then why are you asking, demanding actually, that for Michigan’s voter rolls — and other states’ voter rolls — to be presented to you?” Slotkin fired back.
She then pinned him directly to the proposed rule.
“You’ve proposed it,” she pressed.
“We did,” Steiner conceded.
“So you want it to pass?”
“Yes,” he said.
“You are being used as part of a much bigger story that this president is trying to play out, where he does not believe elections that he loses are valid elections,” Slotkin said. “Please push back on being a pawn in this authoritarian playbook. Don’t taint it with the obsession of this one man.”
The exchange landed amid an MS NOW-reported letter signed by all 47 Senate Democrats warning the proposed rule would transform USPS into “a federal election administration agency — with frightening authorities to disenfranchise Americans.”
The proposed rule is open for public comment through July 2, and 23 state attorneys general have already sued to block Trump’s underlying executive order.
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