As is often the case with Mr. Trump, his narrative is not only false but also self-contradictory and convoluted. Mail-in voting is not riddled with opportunities for fraud; it has been carried out honestly in several states for years. Mr. Trump is on record favoring absentee voting, which is functionally the same as mail-in, in terms of the demands on the U.S. Postal Service. On Tuesday, he added the assertion that congressional Democrats are holding up an economic stimulus package over a demand for “$3.5 billion for universal mail-in”; actually, the $3.6 billion the House included in the Heroes Act was for general, much-needed election logistical support. It could not be conditioned on mail-in voting because that is up to the states.
Mr. Trump also faulted the Democrats for demanding a $25 billion bailout for the USPS, then said the fact that he’ll never agree to it means “they don’t have the money to do the universal mail-in votes” and fraud will result. This non sequitur is also a fib. In a USA Today op-ed published a few hours before Mr. Trump’s news conference, top postal officials said that, even without additional funds, they have “ample capacity to deliver America’s election mail,” which “will account for less than 2 percent of all mail volume from mid-September until Election Day.” That is not a “vast amount of ballots . . . being sent at random,” as Mr. Trump would have it. To be sure, the USPS’s new, and disruptive, effort to get overtime costs under control has fueled Democratic suspicions that it will not be able — or willing — to keep that promise. That’s what can happen when the Postal Board of Governors (four Republicans, two Democrats, all Trump appointees) picks a top Trump political donor to run the agency.