2020 election: Nancy Pelosi considers bringing House back early from summer recess to tackle postal service crisis

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is debating bringing the House back from August recess as early as next week to address problems relating to the United Postal Service (USPS), according to CNN and Politico.

The House chamber is currently in recess, with no votes scheduled on legislation until 14 September. Members of the House could be called back for a vote in the next couple of weeks if Democratic leadership feel it’s necessary.

“Yes there are discussions to bring the House back to address the Postal Service crisis, timing not clear yet. Next week and week after (are) being discussed,” one Democratic aide told CNN after a Saturday call with party leadership.

Several lawmakers have publicly pushed Ms Pelosi to make the call.

“I called Speaker Pelosi today and asked her to call the House back into session immediately to deal with the crisis at the post office. Trump is attempting to sabotage the USPS,” Representative Jim Cooper, a Democrat of Tennessee, tweeted on Saturday.

He added: “We need to subpoena the Postmaster General, and if he fails to appear, we should send the Sgt at Arms to arrest him.”

Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat of Michigan, also tweeted that she would support returning to Washington DC to address the USPS crisis.

“Enough is enough: the House Oversight Committee, which oversees the US Postal Service, should come back to Washington as soon as possible to hold a public hearing with the Postmaster General,” she wrote.

The House Oversight Committee introduced a bill this past week that would forbid the USPS from making changes to its service that Democrats believe could impact mail-in ballots for the November election. Legislators were also considering a requirement that each mail-in ballot would need to be labelled as first class to ensure swift delivery.

All of this comes after Postmaster General Louis Dejoy, a Donald Trump appointee and supporter of the president, has made sweeping changes in a bid to help the USPS save money amid a decline in revenue. Changes included adjusting delivery policies and overtime pay for workers, which could impact the speed in which people receive their mail.

But Democrats have accused the postmaster general of making these changes to undermine a state’s attempt to switch to mail-in voting for the upcoming election.

Ms Pelosi and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York, released a statement on Friday imploring Mr Dejoy to “quickly reverse his operational changes that have led to delays and service reductions for too many Americans and threaten to undermine our democracy”.

The president has repeatedly slammed mail-in voting and claimed it would cause massive voter fraud. It’s been brought up to Mr Trump multiple times that he’s voted by mail in past elections, which he said is allowed but not for voters to do it “universally”.

During a CNN interview on Sunday, host Jake Tapper told White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that there is no evidence of voter fraud through mail-in ballots.

“There’s no evidence there is not either,” Mr Meadows said. “... What the president is against is changing the process to mail-in ballots to everybody.”

“The President of the United States is not going to interfere with anyone trying to legitimately cast their vote,” he added.

Nine states currently have universal mail-in voting in place where voters automatically receive their ballot in the mail. In some of these states, such as Colorado and Utah, this has been part of their voting system for years without complaints from lawmakers. Other states have implemented mail-in ballots by having voters request their ballot by a specific date.

Mr Trump appeared to confirm on Fox News this week that he is against Democrats’ funding proposal for mail-in ballots and the USPS in order to make the voting method more difficult ahead of the November election.

“They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Mr Trump. “If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.”

Democrats have pushed for mail-in ballots as an option in the upcoming election to allow voters to cast their votes from their home amid the coronavirus pandemic.