Judge Stanley Bastian of Yakima, Washington issued a nationwide injunction on September 17 to temporarily halt changes to Postal Service policies that have resulted in mail delivery delays across the country.
In his ruling, Judge Bastion said it was “easy to conclude” that DeJoy’s effort was intended to disrupt and challenge the legitimacy of the Nov. 3 election. The USPS removed 711 high-speed mail sorting machines this year – nearly twice as many as the 388 machines it averaged annually between 2015 and 2019, according to Business Insider.
The fight over the removal of the mail sorting machines is part and parcel of the broader clash between President Donald Trump and American voters in the upcoming presidential election. Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that the increased use of mail-in ballots will lead to a massive fraud and a “rigged” election, reports Transport Topics News.
DeJoy and the USPS, in a filing on Wednesday, said that the injunction should be amended to acknowledge the machines cannot be put back together before the judge makes a final ruling. DeJoy stated that the old machines were stripped for parts to improve or repair other sorting machines. “It is therefore not possible to return such machines to service,” the filing read.
In related news, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday that there hasn’t been a coordinated national voter fraud effort in past elections. “Now, we have not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it’s by mail or otherwise,” he said before a Senate panel in response to a question on whether voting by mail is secure.
