A piece of advice for making your vote count this November: Be skeptical of the mail.
There are too many signs that the postal system in Kansas and Missouri isn’t working quite as it should. One result is that some votes cast in good faith have already gone uncounted.
Just ask Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, who earlier this month fired off a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, pointing out that roughly 1,000 mail-in votes during the state’s August primary election had gone uncounted because of apparent errors by the U.S. Postal Service.
Many mail-in ballots “are either missing postmarks or failing to reach the county election office on time, even when voters have mailed them timely,” Schwab wrote.
“It is unacceptable that your agency has disenfranchised Kansas voters,” he added.
He’s right.
If this maybe sounds to you like a little bit of Republican conspiracy-mongering — Donald Trump is famous for his on-again off-again anti-mail-voting complaints, and Schwab is a member of the GOP — just know that the concern is bipartisan.
Democrats Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri and Sharice Davids of Kansas last week joined three Republicans — Sam Graves and Mark Alford, plus Jake LaTurner of Kansas — all signed onto a letter calling out DeJoy for the widespread missing and delayed mail that has plagued the Kansas City area in recent years.
“Right now, nobody has trust in the postal service,” Cleaver told KMBC.
That’s unfortunate. The post office has long been a cornerstone of American democracy. But it has stumbled in recent years — the reasons for that belong to a different column — which is frankly kind of scary when it comes to this fall’s voting.
A thousand uncounted ballots is not a small number, after all. Presidential elections have turned on fewer votes.
And it’s not just the Kansas City region. Election officials across the country are warning about the postal system problems and its potential effects on the presidential election. Those problems, they said in yet another letter to DeJoy, are widespread and “not one-off mistakes or a problem with specific facilities.”
Which means that voters should plan accordingly. If “nobody has trust in the postal service” — and if that mistrust is justified — then why on earth would they trust the postal service with their ballot?
