USA: Opinion | Democrats’ postal conspiracy is the biggest made-up controversy since Russiagate - Marc A. Thiessen

Anthony S. Fauci said Friday that there is “no reason” most Americans can’t vote in person this November and that voting is as safe as going to a grocery store. “If you go and wear a mask, if you observe the physical distancing and don’t have a crowded situation, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do that,” he told National Geographic. 

No matter: Democrats are pressing ahead with their universal mail-in voting scheme and setting the stage to blame President Trump when it results in an unmitigated disaster. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is already accusing Trump of a “campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the Postal Service to disenfranchise voters.”

Please. This is the biggest made-up controversy since Democrats accused Trump of conspiring with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election.

A massive increase in mail-in ballots will throw the election into chaos not because Trump is manipulating the postal system but because mail-in ballots are the most inherently unreliable way to vote. Vote-by-mail has a much higher failure rate than in-person voting — a fact that was underscored by the catastrophic failure of mail-in voting during Democratic primaries this year.

Those failures had nothing to do with Trump or the U.S. Postal Service. The problem is state election laws that allow voters to request mail-in ballots just a few days before Election Day. If tens of millions of voters all drop ballots in the mail at the last minute, it is inevitable that the postal system will be overwhelmed, and millions of ballots will be delayed, misdirected or arrive without postmarks. This is why the Postal Service General Counsel Thomas J. Marshall recently warned state election officials, urging them to require voters to request ballots at least 15 days before Election Day.

But instead of pushing states to fix their election laws, Democrats are trying to pin the blame on Trump — arguing that he is pushing to “defund” the Postal Service. That is a lie. Just last month, the Trump administration gave the USPS a $10 billion loan, funding authorized in the Cares Act, which Trump signed into law in March. Trump has since signed off on legislation that would turn it into a grant — even though the Wall Street Journal reported that “the Postal Service doesn’t currently need the money.” The Postal Service was a mess long before Trump arrived, losing $78 billion since 2007, but it has plenty of short-term cash. Despite this, Pelosi is demanding that Trump agree to a $25 billion USPS bailout bill that would undoubtedly be loaded up with partisan provisions regarding mail-in voting — and threatening to blame Trump for the coming mail-in voting fiasco if he refuses

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Opinion | Democrats’ postal conspiracy is the biggest made-up controversy since Russiagate - The Washington Post