In September 2020, the USPS sent American households a mailer with instructions for requesting vote-by-mail ballots, but the information was inaccurate in many states.
Records we obtained show some state officials were “absolutely apoplectic” about the mailer.
The mailers told voters to "request your mail in ballot... at least 15 days before Election Day." But that’s inaccurate for Americans living in the nine states and District of Columbia that automatically mailed ballots to registered voters. cnn.com/2020/09/14/pol…
Colorado Sec. of State Jena Griswold sued USPS, arguing the mailer attempted to disenfranchise voters with misleading information. We asked the Colorado State Dept. for emails with USPS in anticipation of widespread use of mail-in ballots in the election. washingtonpost.com/politics/color…
Here’s what the records we uncovered show:
Colorado’s state election director Judd Choate told USPS Director of Election and Political Mail Justin Glass that he was “absolutely apoplectic about the pre-election postcard I just learned about...”
”How could this be sent without someone considering that several states don’t have absentee voters? How could it be sent without consulting even one election official? Please pass along that this mailing will generate literally thousands of calls, emails, and texts...”
”It will cost my election officials hours of their days convincing their voters that everything is okay. It’s embarrassingly amateurish and counterproductive for us and the USPS. I just don’t understand how this postcard could be mailed.”
After Glass said USPS was working on a response for state elections directors, Choate responded: “just a heads up that stakeholding is usually more effective when it occurs before you take an action – not after.”
We submitted records requests with the Office of the Secretary of State of Oregon seeking email communications with USPS. Oregon uses mail-in-voting exclusively. Oregon officials were also frustrated about the inaccurate mailers. americanoversight.org/document/orego…
The USPS liaison, Danny Rogers, forwarded an email to Oregon’s elections director, Steve Trout: “FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. HQ didn’t even tell us about the mailing and or ask for input and I wish they would have…”
Trout responded: “It sounds like even the folks in DC didn’t know about this and it came from a few people at the top of the organization with no coordination with election officials or even the USPS election contacts.”
The lack of coordination with states — and the suggestion that even key USPS staff didn’t know about the mailers in advance — raise further concerns about political interference by the Trump-appointed postmaster general Louis DeJoy.
Even with Trump out of power, DeJoy remains in charge of the postal service. We’re investigating the politicization of USPS under the Trump administration and the threat it posed to voting rights. americanoversight.org/investigation/…
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This week brought a lot of news related to investigations into former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the attempt to stop the certification of the election on Jan. 6, 2021. Here are some of the stories we’ve been tracking:
On Tuesday, the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack issued more subpoenas to individuals involved in the fake-elector scheme, including Pennsylvania Sen. Doug Mastriano and Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem. cnn.com/2022/02/15/pol…
The Biden administration ordered visitor logs from the Trump White House to be presented within 15 days to the select committee, rejecting the former president’s claim that those records were subject to executive privilege. washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…
We previously obtained emails sent by Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first attorney general, regarding the Trump administration’s family-separation policy. Sessions praised the policy’s results and
discussed religious justifications for the harsh policy. americanoversight.org/in-emails-jeff…
In June 2018 — two months after Sessions announced the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy — former Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein forwarded Sessions an email that indicated a decline in U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehensions of undocumented people at the border.
“Thanks,” Sessions responded. “I’m very interested in this. Keep on it. Every decline in entry’s is huge reducing those who got past border too. With the decline and continued prosecution numbers the percentage goes up and we are in virtuous cycle.”
A failed legal challenge led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton attempted to overturn the 2020 election results by invalidating results from four battleground states won by President Biden. Here’s what we’ve uncovered so far about Paxton’s lawsuit.
Paxton’s suit was thrown out by the Supreme Court within days, but not before it drew support from at least 125 Republican members of the House of Representatives, Trump himself, and the attorneys general of 17 other states. axios.com/house-republic…
We filed open records requests in Texas and several other states that joined the suit to uncover more information about this authoritarian effort to thwart democracy. americanoversight.org/investigation/…
NEW: Former Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke broke ethics rules while in office by improperly participating in negotiations over a real estate deal in his Montana hometown, according to a new DOI inspector general report. washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…
Beginning in 2017, we started investigating a range of concerns about Zinke's conduct in office, including his decision to exempt Florida from the expanded offshore drilling plan and his arrangement of personal VIP tours of national parks, among others. americanoversight.org/investigation/…
We obtained a number of records, including documents that revealed that Zinke and his senior aides arranged for various taxidermied animals, including a bison, elk, grizzly, and moose, to be installed in their offices at taxpayer expense. americanoversight.org/zinke-and-biso…
We obtained former Attorney General William Barr’s calendars for May 2019 through 2020. These records show Barr attended numerous White House meetings throughout President Trump’s first impeachment. americanoversight.org/document/attor…
On Dec. 2, 2019, House Republicans released their minority report on the impeachment inquiry. Barr’s calendars show he was at the White House the same day.
On Dec. 5, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked the House Judiciary Committee to draft articles of impeachment. The next day, Barr had a White House meeting.
In the weeks before the 2020 election, Chad Wolf — then acting secretary of DHS — traveled to swing states to tout Trump’s policies. Records we obtained, reported on by @TIME, show the use of government planes for these trips cost taxpayers $221,340. time.com/6146191/chad-w…
Wolf’s trips to states including Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Texas cost taxpayers a total of $223,652.
These trips were part of a number of problematic and politicized trips prior to the 2020 election by top Trump administration officials, who traveled across the country to promote Trump’s policies.