If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can recall the very sound our mail slot at home would make as the letter carrier deposited our day’s delivery. My sister and I would race to be the first to gather the mail and plop it on the kitchen table. Its delivery was as much a fixture in our childhood as was the sound of the milkman’s bottles on the back step or the thud of the evening paper as it sailed across our lawn and landed on the porch.
Later, when I started collecting stamps, I learned the different classes of postage. “First Class” meant just that: it had priority. And if I had any questions about mail or postage or stamps, I could always go downtown and ask my uncle who was the postmaster. He once gave me a tour of the post office, introducing me to all the staff, including Sandy, the carrier for our route. What he and his fellow workers exemplified — and I greatly admired — was pride in their work and the integrity of the U.S. Postal Service. One of my earliest pieces of memorization was the Service’s motto: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these carriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
Well, so much for that if the new Postmaster General’s recently implemented procedures result in major delays of the mail. What we thought we were buying with a First Class stamp just a few weeks ago may now not be the same service we have come to expect. The impact of those changes, according to postal workers themselves, is demoralizing and a challenge to their commitment to their historic mission.
The president’s oft-repeated judgment that vote by mail is rife with fraud has been disproved by so many secretaries of state — some of whom are Republicans — that it is irrational, if not virtually felonious, on that basis to tamper, albeit indirectly through a major donor political appointee, with the integrity of one of our most trusted institutions. That the Postal Service must find its way in an ever more competitive environment is obvious, but it cannot be a party to any political effort to influence a free and unencumbered election.
The late John Lewis called on us all to vote, reminding us that it is the most powerful act we can perform in a democracy. We must ensure that our other fundamental institution is able freely to play its role in that process.