Trump’s Handpicked Postal Service Chair Has A Long History Of Voter Suppression
President Donald Trump’s selection for a key Postal Service position, Robert M. Duncan, once had a very different job: steering the Republican Party while it undertook some of its most brazen voter suppression schemes.
Duncan is now the chair of the Postal Service board of governors, but he previously served as general counsel and then chair of the Republican National Committee from 2002 to 2009, a time when the committee and its state counterparts oversaw an unprecedented escalation of voter disenfranchisement efforts in swing states.
From 2004 to 2006, when Duncan was the committee’s general counsel, party officials challenged the eligibility of at least 77,000 voters, a 2007 report by the nonpartisan group Project Vote found.
As it happens, one of the party’s favored tactics relied on the U.S. mail. In 2004, Republicans in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania sent thousands of nonforwardable letters and postcards to select voters — particularly minority voters — and used the mail returned as undeliverable to come up with voter registration challenge lists.
Duncan’s history is the latest alarm bell for those fearful that Trump is attempting to undermine the U.S. Postal Service in order to win reelection.
The Postal Service group that Duncan has chaired since 2018, the board of governors, selected Louis DeJoy to be postmaster general after Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, reportedly suggested him strongly. DeJoy is a Republican megadonor who has given money to Trump and has overseen what voting rights advocates and Democrats said is a mass disenfranchisement campaign against voters who plan to cast their ballots by mail.
It was Duncan who raised DeJoy’s name to Mnuchin as a possible candidate for the job, The New York Times reported Saturday.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment from Mnuchin.
Roughly 80 million voters are expected to do so in the upcoming election, with supporters of...
