With the election just a few weeks away, Democrats are increasingly afraid to mail in their ballots—for understandable reasons. Donald Trump’s handpicked postmaster general enacted a raft of policy changes that have slowed mail delivery. (Under intense pressure, Louis DeJoy, a major Republican donor, announced that he would pause more scheduled measures until after the election, but also said he would not reverse many of the changes he already made.) Trump himself has openly admitted to hampering the Postal Service’s ability to handle a surge in mail ballots. And GOP officials around the country have taken myriad actions to make it harder for people to vote from home, including by restricting the use of ballot drop boxes—a highly popular option in universal vote-by-mail states like Colorado, Oregon, and Utah.
These actions have sent a message to voters that the Postal Service will screw up their ability to vote by mail, either by not getting their ballots to them on time, delivering them to elections officials too late to be counted, or maybe even losing them altogether. Unfortunately for Democrats, this anxiety could become a catastrophic problem. There’s evidence to show that if Democratic voters are worried about the USPS and decline to vote by mail, they won’t necessarily march to the polling place instead. Many of them just won’t vote at all. Given that Trump won key states by minuscule margins in 2016, such a drop-off could secure his reelection.
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