Trump clearly breaking the law in Post Office attack

Ryan Cooper, The Week - The point of hamstringing the Post Office is to prevent as many people from voting by mail as possible, because 72 percent of Democrats say they are likely to vote by mail, as compared to 22 percent of Republicans. Trump and his stooge are using their federal power to forcibly disenfranchise American citizens. We have it straight from the horse's mouth.

Let's compare that behavior to 18 U.S. Code § 594, which states: "Whoever intimidates, threatens, coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce, any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose" in a federal election faces fines and up to a year in prison. (By the way, someone who "knowingly and willfully obstructs or retards the passage of the mail" also faces fines and up to six months in prison.)

States also all have laws against stealing elections, it turns out. In Michigan, for instance, it is a felony to "attempt, by means of bribery, menace, or other corrupt means or device, either directly or indirectly, to influence an elector in giving his or her vote, or to deter the elector from, or interrupt the elector in giving his or her vote at any election held in this state." Wisconsin law states: "No person may personally or through an agent make use of or threaten to make use of force, violence, or restraint in order to induce or compel any person to vote or refrain from voting at an election." In South Carolina, someone "who by force, intimidation, deception, fraud, bribery, or undue influence obtains, procures, or controls the vote of any voter to be cast for any candidate or measure other than as intended or desired by such voter" is also guilty of a felony. In California, every person who "threatens to make use of any force, violence, or tactic of coercion or intimidation, to induce or compel any other person to vote or refrain from voting at any election," is guilty of a felony as well. In Texas, someone who "makes any effort … to influence the independent exercise of the vote of another in the presence of the ballot or during the voting process" is guilty of election fraud, a misdemeanor.

If I submit my ballot by mail, as is legal in every state under varying conditions, only for it to end up stranded in some mail sorting facility and never counted thanks to Trump's deliberate harming of the Post Office, I will have been forcibly prevented from voting. At bottom it is no different from snatching my ballot out of my hands and setting it on fire.