USPS chief gets bipartisan blast as he tells swing-state voters to mail in ballots early

LAS VEGAS — Voters in swing states such as Wisconsin and Georgia can trust their mail ballots will arrive at election offices on time, America’s top postal official insisted Thursday — but pols on both sides of the aisle weren’t buying it as they blasted him for service declines across the country.Testifying before the House Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee, US Postal Service CEO and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said his 650,000-person workforce is on guard to make sure ballots move and folks can “absolutely” trust nothing will hinder their votes’ delivery.The House panel met to weigh the agency’s role in the 2024 elections, which has drawn substantial scrutiny from state election officials.Mail-in voting jumped 25% between 2016 and 2020, subcommittee Chair David Joyce (R-Ohio) said, and this year “we expect that voting by mail will be popular again.”DeJoy breezily brushed off concerns: “We’ve delivered in the heightened part of a pandemic, in the most sensationalized political time of elections.”The Brooklyn-born postal chief — who took the job in 2020, three months before that year’s balloting — said USPS is “fully ready to successfully deliver the nation’s mail-in ballots for voters who choose to use us to vote.”Despite those blandishments, House members pummeled DeJoy over his Delivering for America plan that shifts and consolidates mail processing from smaller outposts to urban centers to cut costs as first-class-mail volume has declined around 500% since 2000.Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said the agency’s Badger State reorganization “broke” mail delivery there.“You blew the rocket ship up,” Pocan said, referring to a shift to Milwaukee for all Wisconsin mail processing.

“I truly understand you’re focused on the cost savings.I just want you to be as focused on the delivery of the mail.”Joyce chided DeJoy over a 51% drop in on-time first-class-mail performance in Atlanta under the consolida...