In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about mail-in voting for the Nov. 3 General Election, the future of the U.S. Postal Service is at risk, according to Lora Taub, Muhlenberg College’s dean for digital learning and professor of the history of communications.

“The United States Postal Service is one of the oldest – and most consistently threatened – public services in American history,” Taub said in an interview with the Bethlehem Press, “the threat is substantially greater today than ever before.”

The immediate risk is the current effort to cast doubt on the postal service’s ability to handle the volume of mail-in ballots generated by the election, Taub explained. That doubt was created by a combination of actions of the new Trump-appointed Postmaster General Louis Dejoy, whose decisions actually slowed mail delivery, and a disinformation campaign in support of calls to reorganize and restructure the postal service as a corporation.

As a result of Dejoy’s new policies, including dismantling sorting machines and eliminating overtime for workers, 10 states filed lawsuits against the postal service. On Sept. 17, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, issued an injunction on the new policies put in place under DeJoy because, he said, they “likely will slow down delivery of ballots” this fall, creating a “substantial possibility that many voters will be disenfranchised and the states may not be able to effectively, timely, accurately determine election outcomes.”

The judge connected the USPS policies to Trump’s broadsides against mail voting, saying the actions amount to “voter disenfranchisement.” The judge went on to conclude that the recent Postal Services’ changes are an intentional effort on the part the current administration to disrupt and challenge the legitimacy of upcoming local, state, and federal elections.”

Taub said she was heartened by the decision, at least in the short term, but her concern about the future of the postal service is based on history and precedent. “The public postal service was created and placed in Article I of the Constitution by the founding fathers, who understood that it was critical to maintaining democracy. It is a public service, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is the last remaining public communication model.”

Looking back in time, Taub noted, “every previous communication model that operated as a public utility is now reorganized as a profit-driven entity – telegraph, telephone, radio. television, newspapers and, more recently, the Internet.”

Ultimately, it is about control of communication, which is “absolutely central to power,” Taub said. “There are lots of precedents for manipulating those systems in the interest of maintaining power.”

As for the U.S. Postal Service, Taub said, “The real long-term goal isn’t voter suppression or sowing chaos and concern about election results. It is to end universal mail carriage and privatize the national postal system. That has been a Republican goal since at least the time of Hoover’s presidency, and it advanced under President Nixon in the ’70s, Reagan in the ’80s, and both Bush presidents in the ‘90s.”