Several USPS internal documents revealed that their letter sorting machines will be taken out of service throughout the country.
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In a report by VICE, 20 percent of these machines will be out of service and it was planned back in May before Trump’s top donator and Republican supporter Louis DeJoy became postmaster general. The plan was dated May 15, nine days before his position was announced by the Board of Governors. The USPS planned to remove 469 out of 4,926 machines used for letters and flatheads along with 746 out of 3,765 delivery bar code sorters, the machines used to sort letters, postcards, and ballots.
Additionally, the document titled “Equipment Reduction”, provides further information about the number of machines being removed in region and facility in the country. Although the document claims these removals will begin at the end of July, several workers have come forward to confirmed that machine removals happened beforehand and started in Michigan, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Texas.
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The machine removal will continue within the first quarter of 2021 as officials revealed to union leaders in an updated document for June. The long term effects of removing these machines can lead to postal workers having difficulty sorting through letters and other parcels. Government leaders have also called out President Donald Trump for taking advantage of this process after he didn’t want mail-in ballots to be counted accurately.