2024 Elections – It’s Time to Get Out the Vote!

Elections and protecting the Vote-by-Mail ballots should be our top priority. To do that, the Postmaster General needs to bring Advanced Facer Canceller System (AFCS) 200s and Delivery Barcode Sorter (DBCS) equipment back to plants where management had them removed. To protect our ballots, the processing plants need to cancel, process, deliver, and re-deliver ballots within their Sectional Center Facility area to make sure election officials receive ballots on time and are counted! We cannot afford to have ballots processed hundreds of miles away, which has caused many of the delays in the delivery of primary ballots and First-Class mail. A perfect example is in Medford, OR, where the Postal Service improperly removed processing equipment just before the primary election. Because Oregon is a Vote-by-Mail state, all the ballots for southern counties went 285 miles away to Portland for processing. Late ballots were not counted.

The public is waiting for us to return to the 2012 Service Standards so that we promptly process and deliver mail. At our recent National Convention, delegates overwhelmingly voted to mandate that we do everything we can to bring those standards back! We need everyone to get involved to protect our democracy.

We have just two months to mobilize voters to elect candidates that support postal issues and those that protect the future of our families, jobs, communities, and our planet. Making sure we vote by mail is not enough! We must protect the mail-in ballot. We need to make sure people register and vote by mail early. For the areas where it is too late to register by mail, we need to advocate that people should vote in person on election day, and to make sure voters know where candidates stand on the issues in local and state level elections as well. We cannot distribute campaign material on postal premises, we cannot campaign on the clock. We can inform members about reputable fact-check websites, such as Factcheck. org, so they can do their own research about the pros and cons of a candidate. During this election season, federal employees like us postal workers should be aware of the Hatch Act. It is a federal law that regulates how federal employees take part in partisan political activity. It is important to understand what you can and cannot do before taking partisan actions in the workplace. Learn more about the Hatch Act, and what it means for you at apwu.org/hatch-act-election.

It is important for people to decide who will help protect us, our families, and our jobs, and who will protect the environment we live in. Your voting decision should value human dignity. We cannot silence our moral witness, and people of faith have an opportunity to build the foundation of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural democratic society that appreciates how all people are interconnected, building a society that provides for everyone’s well-being. Democracy and solidarity, not dictatorship. We have to give a damn about working people, equal access to healthcare, and a place where workers are protected. We have the power to overcome division and provide equitable justice, whether you’re rich, poor, or working poor, our future belongs to everyone.

Nobody likes to be told who to vote for, and many people don’t have all the facts about the candidates, and don’t realize that their vote does matter. Ask your local president if you can help union members register to vote if they haven’t registered yet or may have been taken off the rolls and don’t know they are ineligible. Let’s show up for each other, help everyone get their ballot counted, and vote their conscience so that everyone in this country thrives. ■