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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. New Jersey and the US Postal Service are both preparing for the November elections. At least they're trying. On Friday, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced that every New Jersey resident who is registered to vote will be mailed a ballot in an attempt to keep voters safe from exposure to COVID-19, but as you know, the Trump administration has repeatedly criticized mail-in voting, which, they say, risks leading to a lot of voter fraud, especially mail-in voting of this type or actual ballots on mail to every registered voter.

What's more, the President said he is holding up vital funding for the USPS. That, of course, would be the institution sending out and collecting the mail-in ballots. The President said this on Thursday.

President Donald Trump: They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots, but 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.

Brian: That makes it sound like out and out sabotage, literally the President of the United States who doesn't want a lot of mail-in voting, trying to limit funding for the post office. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in response to that, last night announced that she is calling the House back into session for an extraordinary, and this is historically extraordinary, August special session, not to mention convention week's special session, to deal with what she considers the postal democracy crisis.

Joining me now to discuss both how New Jersey will get ready for election day, including mail-in voting, and what Congress is doing to ensure that the USPS can do its job is congressman Bill Pascrell, who represents New Jersey's 9th District, which includes parts of Bergen, Hudson and Passaic counties, and I will say that that also includes Paterson where there was an incidence of voter fraud in the mail-in ballot context this year, so we'll have to deal with that. Congressman Pascrell, welcome back to WNYC always great to have you.

Congressman Bill Pascrell: Brian, it's always an honor to talk to a real journalist. You've done a great job, fantastic job. I hope I'm put to the same test as you.

Brian: [chuckles] Thank you very much. It's all very kind of you to say. Now, let me start here. You are calling, I see, for New Jersey's State Attorney General, to open a criminal inquiry into the President's handling of the Postal Service. You tweeted last week that you've asked the Attorney General to quote impanel a grand jury to look at subversion of New Jersey election laws by Donald Trump, Louis DeJoy, Trump's Postmaster General, and other Trump officials in their accelerating arson. You called it of the post office. What is it that a state attorney general could do about that kind of federal activity?

Bill: As you know, the Federal Attorney General, who has lost total credibility amongst American people, regardless of where they stand in terms of politics, he's not going to do anything. He's a mouthpiece for the administration, which he should not be. The constitution doesn't call for that. If folks listen to what you showed on your show, the President practically confessed to the crime. He's out to destroy the United States Postal Offices. He's been for many years. 94 days ago, we passed the Heroes Act in Congress, which provided $25 billion. [unintelligible 00:04:00] people forget this, Brian. 194 days ago, we passed the USPS Fairness Act.

In that act which passed the House, never saw the light of day in the Senate, in that act, what we did basically the House of Representatives was to say, "Let's deal with why the post office has financial problems now, let's deal with that immediately by turning back what we had passed in 2006," where they had to pre-fund retirement benefits and health benefits, which is ridiculous. The only agency I know of that has to do that is the postal office. It's a revered agency. It is a revered service to the American people. Our Postal Service, the United States Postal Service handles 47% of the world's mail. These folks are acting as if it's just some aside, some [unintelligible 00:05:06] to the government to get the mail through. Now, this is serious business. I think they're messing with the wrong people. I know Nancy Pelosi is not going to step aside and let them do whatever they want to do because people have a right to vote. We did this in New Jersey, in the primary where people got their balance to the mail. There were only a few posts that were open on Election Day, polling places. There will be at least 50% open this Election Day in November, because people should have that right as well to get those money places. We'd lost a lot of people [unintelligible 00:05:45] want to come out work on Election Day. They don't want to be exposed to any crowds whatsoever.

Therefore, that's working as well. The President who votes by mail wants to do away with mail voting and he thought he can get away with this, but it's an insult to the employees of the post office, all 600,000 of them, we've lost 2,400 postal workers due to COVID.

Brian: 2,400.

Bill: It's the virus-

Brian: 2,400? I didn't know it was going on.

Bill: -that caught the virus is- 60 have died, I'm mistaken. 2,400 have caught the virus, and 60 had died. There are more than 17,000 of its 630 employees have been quarantined. We're dealing with a very serious situation here. We passed the bill 194 days ago to change that, so they have to prepay. If they didn't have to prepay those benefits, Brian, they would be running a profit at this moment as we speak, and that's not the case.

Brian: The Senate didn't pass that bill.

Bill: We're going to do everything we can, and I think the States can do just as much. We saw that in getting his financial reports. This is a reckless cowardly group who are trying to backslide this election and get away with it. We just can't let them do that. I'm sorry.

Brian: Let me invite callers. I know a lot of you have been following these post office story developments. A lot of you have things to say or things to ask, in this case, our guest, New Jersey democratic Congressman Bill Pascrell, who among other things, as you heard, is urging the New Jersey State Attorney General to take action against the Trump administration if they try to block efficient mail-in voting and he, of course, was one of the 400 plus members being called back into session later this week by speaker Nancy Pelosi to deal with this at the legislative level. She considers this a crisis of democracy that can't wait until after the conventions.

646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Let me get your take on the Patterson situation though, because you've seen President Trump cites this in his news conferences, pretty much daily at this point.

For people who don't know, in May, and tell me if you take this as an accurate, rendering of what happened, Governor Murphy ordered that several local elections be held by mail and voting because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in Patterson, which is in your district, the US Postal Inspection Service tipped off state law enforcement to hundreds of mail-in ballots stuffed in a Patterson mailbox.

There were other bundled ballots discovered nearby, and as a result, New Jersey Attorney General, the same one you want to look into these actions on the part of the Trump administration, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal charged several people with voter fraud and other crimes, including Paterson, City Councilman Michael Jackson, and Councilman-Elect Alex Mendez. How does what happened in Patterson this year inform your understanding of voter fraud, and how can you as a Congressman from Patterson, say to the rest of the country, this is not a problem?

Bill: First of all, there's no evidence that there was national attempts and conspiracies to wreak mail-in ballots. There's no evidence whatsoever. In Patterson, New Jersey, the Attorney General and the Governor spoke out before the election was even over, because those ballots were found before the election was over. Who's ever been guilty of this bundling of mail-in ballots should throw a book at them, whomever they may be regardless of where they stand in this non-partisan election. I believe that the Governor acted properly, and certainly did the Attorney General Grewal. I have confidence in Grewal. I don't have confidence in the Attorney General of the United States, who I found to have little confidence in any matter.

We want to truth to come out. There's not widespread evidence of local fraud as well. You cannot bundle more than three ballots if you want to bring them in in a mail-in or an absentee ballot situation. Actually, it's the same, mail-in ballots and absentee ballots. These folks were bundling them and thinking that they could bring this all in together. To avoid fraud, the laws of New Jersey are very clear, that only three ballots can be sent in at the same time by the same person or brought in by the same time or mail at the same time. I'm sure whoever did this is going to be brought to justice. Names of people have already been invited.

If it's correct what you say, and I believe it is, I think you hit the nail right on the head. If Trump has no evidence of widespread fraud, we've been doing this for a long time. People have used absentee ballots when they're needed. We've been right now during COVID-19. This is what that name of the game is, because people have a right to vote regardless of whether they're compliant to the norms or they're not and regardless of whether the polls are open or they're not.

I'm going to do everything in my power as United States congressman, it's my duty, it's my responsibility to make sure that folks can vote and whatever is convenient for them. We should make it easier for people to vote, not make it more difficult. Does that mean we can have checks and balances? Of course. We want to be able to check signatures, want to be able to see that the person voted under his own pretense. I believe, Brian, that, and go back 20 years, I've looked to the record, that I have not seen any such widespread attempts to change the ballots or to vote illegally. No one could come up with that evidence, no one.

Brian Lehrer: I don't know if you were watching CNN State of the Union yesterday morning. Here is a remarkable, this tiny little 7-second exchange between the host Jake Tapper and President Trump's White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Listen carefully, folks, because this goes by fast. You will hear Mark Meadows try to make the case that, because there is no widespread evidence, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the history of the United States.

Bill: He admitted it.

Brian: He admitted it, but used that as still an argument to raise doubts and so doubts. Listen to this exchange. Jake Tapper speaks first.

Jake Tapper: There's no evidence of widespread voter fraud?

Mark Meadows: There is no evidence that there's not either. That's the definition of fraud, Jake.

Brian: He acknowledges that there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud. That's Trump's White House Chief of Staff, but says because there is no evidence, he can assume that there isn't either.

Bill: Besides Trump's confession to the fact, Mark Meadows, who has a taste for truth once in a while, thank God there's somebody there that does that, he spilled the beans yesterday. In other words, there might have been evidence, but we wanted to avoid those possibilities. We have avoided those possibilities. We do check signatures. That's not allowed, bundling of mail-in votes. The fact of the matter is, there is no evidence. We continue to say that. We said it in 2016. We said it in 2018. There isn't.

Trump is trying to use this as an excuse to change the entire system and protocol of getting people to vote in the United States of America. We finished the age of suppressing the votes regardless of color of skin, religion, nationality or party affiliation, everybody. I did the numbers the other day, Brian. Who does this really put in jeopardy more than anything? A lot of Trump voters are in jeopardy of not having their votes counted if they attempted to slow the vote up.

This is ridiculous. I'm saying to you that we're going to catch all these voters in a big fish net, and regardless of whether I hurt myself, this, to me, shows, this again they couldn't shoot straight. They confess it, the crime, then they say, "This is really not a crime because we don't--" Okay, there's no evidence, but there might be evidence in the future. What kind of way to run things is that?

Brian: It looks like we have a former Postal Inspector calling in. Let me take that call for you from John in Allendale, New Jersey. You are on WNYC with Congressman Bill Pascrell. Hi, John.

John: Hi, Congressman. Hi, Brian.

Bill: How are you, sir?

John: Thank you. Fine, thank you. I worked for 30 years as a postal inspector in New York. I worked for three and a half years as a letter carrier in New Jersey. I retired in April 2017. The postal employees and the postal Inspectors, they've proven throughout the history of the United States that they preserve the sanctity of the mail, and the mail gets processed professionally, with integrity, and delivered through anthrax, hurricanes, tornadoes, pandemics, acts of terrorism, floods, et cetera. The integrity of the US Postal Service and the integrity of the US Postal Inspection Service has been proven for about 250 years thereabouts.

Bill: Modeled in the Constitution, my friend.

John: Correct. You've heard the postal motto, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." It's a sad state of affairs if we have to add to that the dirty tricks of the President of the United States and his enablers. I find that pathetic.

Brian: We already can't add more.

John: Why don't we have Jimmy Carter and people of his ilk monitoring the US elections, like he and others have done in countries all over the world to preserve their integrity, because it's gotten to this point where we have to do that. I'm sorry to be so long-winded.

Brian: John, as a former postal inspector, let me and you weren't long-winded that at all really, let me ask you to be even, to expel some more wind on this answer. What would you say candidly, as a 30-year postal inspector, would the challenge be for the post office, in handling mail-in voting at the scale that we're talking about, which would certainly be unprecedented?

John: The challenge is, you have to be able to have the mail processing equipment, not take away mail processing equipment. You also have to have enough staff, which we probably do, but, if necessary, they can always bring on extra staff like they do every year around holiday time. That's not unusual at all. That would be another thing. As far as the integrity of the mail, I think that's without question, but you need enough staff and you need proper equipment at a mail processing end, and as far as collection boxes go, you have to be concerned about this. Collection boxes in secure locations, that's important, 24/7, 365 days a year, not just during an election.

Brian: John, thank you. I'm going to leave it there. Thank you so much, please call us again. At least Mark Meadows did seem to say in that interview on CNN yesterday, Congressman, that they're going to stop removing the sorting equipment, and they're going to stop removing mailboxes until after the election.

Bill: Yes, they got caught at it.

Brian: He did say that this was something that preceded the Trump administration's Postmaster General appointment, that it wasn't political. It was something that was long-planned as part of the downsizing of the post office because most people use email these days. Is that fair?

Bill: I don't think it's fair whatsoever. I think Mark Meadows, he put the icing on the cake when he said there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the federal elections. Enough said about that, and therefore, so we're going to anticipate fraud. That's interesting. We are not going to anticipate what they're trying to do to the postal office. They're trying to destroy it. For what reasons? I don't want to believe that DeJoy was put there because he has connections and investments in companies that compete with the post office. I don't want to go that far, but it may be true.

The fact is, 194 days ago, we passed legislation to deal with the economic problems and the financial problems of the post office. They chose, Mitch McConnell chose not to deal with it. He chose not to deal with that Heroes Act, which had been a help to our police and our fire, would have helped our cities and our states deal with the COVID-19. He chose not to--

Brian: What's your stance of the Senate now? Because the President did backtrack from what he said Thursday, the clip we played that made it sound like he's purposely defunding the post office to sabotage the election. He said if they pass the bill in Congress with the funding, he'll sign it.

Bill: The funding of post office is ridiculous.

Brian: That means you have to get in common to go along.

Bill: Yes, but he is Republican Party in the Senate, then the Republican senators and the House members, but the bill we passed 194 days ago, that legislation had over 300 votes, that was a bipartisan piece of legislation. There are many people on the Republican side who want to do the right thing, but they got to speak out more. The President has to hear this.

Brian: This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM, 88.1 Trenton, WNJP, 88.5 Sussex, WNJY, 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey Public Radio. We'll finish up with New Jersey Congressman Bill Pascrell in these next few minutes, and then Dan Rather is standing by, talking about somebody who's covered a lot of conventions, but I want to get in two more quick phone calls to you from people who I think have good questions. David in Brooklyn wants to ask you about a particular way that people could try to commit voter fraud and get your response. David, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling. David, you're there? David once, David twice.

I'll ask David's question, which according to my screener was, "What is to prevent someone from voting in-person and by mail?" Do we still have Congressman Pascrell? Uh-oh, do we still have me? We still have me, but we seem to have lost the Congressman and the call. You know what? It was about time to wrap it up anyway.

The answer to the question, I believe, is, they will check the ballots against the ballots once you have voted. Let's say you vote first by mail and they get your envelope, they're going to see your name, your signature, they're going to check you off. Then, if you come in to the polling place in person and try to vote again, they're going to say, "You already voted." That's an easy one to catch. I guess--

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