Make The Post Office Great Again

“It has such incredible potential and has been totally underutilized” ~Ivanka Trump speaking of the Old Post Office Building in Washington DC.

Sometime after the 2020 election, I started seeing posts on social media claiming that paper ballots had been printed with a watermark. It sounded like a great way to identify fake ballots, and I was hopeful that this would be the thing that exposed the rigged election. It wasn’t. I’ve yet to hear any more news of watermarked ballots so I’m not sure if the story was true or just wishful thinking. I also remember a story about the approval of a United States Postal Service patent for blockchain technology that would be used to secure our vote. This too gave me hope, but we’ve been through a couple of elections since then, and I’ve never used that technology to vote.

Prior to the 2020 election, President Trump was vocal about his disapproval of the US Postal Service. He complained of their loss of revenue, Amazon taking advantage of the service, and concerns about mail-in voting. After the 2024 election, he again started bringing attention to the problems with the Postal Service. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but I can't recall any President ever highlighting the Post Office the way he has. Whenever President Trump focuses on something that seems irrelevant to his role, it grabs my attention.

Background

The Postal Service falls under the Executive Branch of the federal government and is authorized by the Constitution. The first post office was established in 1775, making it older than the nation. It’s managed by a Board of Governors similar to a board of directors of a publicly held corporation. The Board consists of up to nine Governors, the Deputy Postmaster General, and the Postmaster General. The Governors are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, while the Postmaster General is appointed by the Board of Governors.

As Obama’s second term came to a close, a disagreement between Senators Mitch McConnell and Bernie Sanders left the Postal Service’s Board of Governors empty for the first time since its creation in 1970. This provided President Trump with the opportunity to nominate who he chose, and he filled the Board with his appointees.

Early into his first term, President Trump proposed turning the Postal Service into a private entity, which was met with strong bipartisan opposition. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was tasked with evaluating the operation and finances of the Postal Service, as well as working toward creating a sustainable business model. In 2020, the Board of Governors appointed Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General. DeJoy was a donor to President Trump’s campaign and served as the national finance chairman for the RNC. He is the first person in decades to lead the Postal Service without prior experience as a letter carrier or an employee of the agency.

The Washington Post reported that Steve Mnuchin recruited DeJoy, although Mnuchin denies that claim. Democrat Senators called on Louis DeJoy to testify in front of Congress to determine if Trump and Mnuchin had any influence over his selection. Senator Chuck Schumer wrote that DeJoy had made a series of damaging operational changes that led to delays in mail delivery, including mail-in ballots. The delays increased the need for answers on why DeJoy was selected. When Congress tried to question the executive search firm that was used to select DeJoy, the USPS blocked it claiming that the information requested was confidential. By 2021, some Democrats wanted the entire Postal Service board fired so they could appoint successors to remove DeJoy as Postmaster General. That didn’t happen and DeJoy remained.

Blockchain Technology Patent

In 2019, the Postal Service applied for a patent for blockchain technology under the previous Postmaster General. While blockchain was originally developed as part of digital currency, people were realizing that it can be used to transfer any kind of information quickly and privately. The patent was designed to allow voters to cast their votes with a mobile app, recording the votes in multiple locations at the same time, similar to how bitcoin transactions are made. The project was said to have been abandoned, as it was reportedly only exploratory in nature. Despite that claim, the patent was awarded in August 2020.

The Voting Blockchain Patent has yet to be used in our elections. According to the filing, the patent relates to a voting system that uses blockchains to track and secure the vote by mail system. The proposed system works with two main databases to securely store votes. Electronic signatures are used to confirm each vote and ballot codes keep the votes anonymous. Voters can cast their votes using a mobile app, ensuring the process is easy and secure. To combat the problem of non-citizens voting in our elections, the Postal Service could perform proof of identity and US citizenship services just as they do for passport applications. The Postal Service could ensure anyone voting in our elections is a US citizen.

According to The Hill, an assessment released by federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI determined that mobile voting systems had risks to “confidentiality, integrity, and availability of voted ballots.” We can deposit a check into our bank account by taking a picture with an app on our phone without any issues. Once we verify that the funds have been deposited in our account, we can throw the check away. They want us to believe that our finances are secure using this method, but our vote isn’t.

The Postal Service is a federal agency and although individual states manage their elections, the federal government provides funding and assists with resources like voting technology. The Constitution grants Congress the authority to make or alter election regulations and the 2002 Help America Vote Act allows for improvements to expand voting technology. In other words, it is within the scope of the federal government to develop a voting app to be used nationwide. Can you imagine the voter turnout if we could vote as easily as we deposit checks?

Make the Post Office Great Again

President Trump wants to Make the Post Office Great Again, and a voting app isn’t the only way this could be done.

Many in the truth community believe that a major part of President Trump’s agenda is to eliminate the Central Banking System and its hold over the world. Eliminating the Central Bank and returning financial freedom to individual countries, including the United States, is a game changer for the future. It’s a dream that didn’t seem possible prior to President Trump.

In 2016, the USPS Office of Inspector General released a report titled, Blockchain Technology: Possibilities for the U.S. Postal Service. However, unlike the blockchain patent that focuses on elections and voting, the report from 2016 describes the use of blockchain technology for financial services. The report details how the Postal Service could benefit from the use of blockchain technology for financial services, identity services, supply chain management, and device management, and recommends the USPS consider exploring and experimenting with it. Three years after this report was written, the Postal Service applied for the blockchain patent.

The USPS has proposed expanding its role to include financial services for the past decade. In 2014, the USPS Office of the Inspector General released a different report that estimated adding financial services would provide the Postal Service with $9 billion in revenue from offering financial services like low-fee ATMs, bill payment, and check cashing. It would also provide basic financial services to the nearly 10 million unbanked and underbanked households in the country since the Postal Service is located everywhere. Even though the report is over a decade old and was likely written before any of us considered the possibility of abolishing central banks, much of the information in the report remains relevant today.

Both OIG reports suggest adding financial services to the USPS, using different types of technology. The 2014 report focused on financial services that include reloadable prepaid cards, as well as utilizing Post Offices to assist people who are technology challenged or without access to smartphones and laptops. The 2016 report focused on blockchain technology and recommended creating a financial platform called Postcoin.

If we were to decentralize our financial system, how would that look? Is it possible that the Postal Service will serve in some capacity as a decentralized exchange assisting the public with information and education on a new financial system? Could the Postal Service serve as a modern-day “bank?” It’s been done before.

From 1911 to 1967, the Postal Savings System provided basic financial products, providing the opportunity to make savings deposits at designated Post Offices nationwide. During the 1930s, when many banks failed following the Great Depression, the Postal Savings System was seen as safe and reliable.

In 2021, a group of postal workers and others came together to develop the People’s Postal Agenda, hoping to bring much needed revenue without cutting jobs or increasing postage costs. Many new services were proposed including allowing the Postal Service to provide financial services, serving as a modernized version of the Postal Savings System.

The Post Master Manipulator

By now, we should all be familiar with President Trump’s ability to persuade the Democrats to do something by bringing attention to it. All he needed to say was that he wanted to privatize the Postal Service and the Democrats opposed it. “Privatizing the Postal Service would have disastrous consequences for the Americans and businesses who rely on USPS every day,” Democrat Representative Gerry Connolly posted to X.

Three years into Postmaster General DeJoy’s 10-year “Delivering for America” plan, people were experiencing higher prices for slower service, missing and delayed mail, post office closures and reduced hours. The plan was referred to as a death by a thousand cuts approach to save the Postal Service. Critics of DeJoy’s plan recommended Congress end a 2006 law that forbade the USPS from offering new products in an attempt to raise revenue. A Democrat Representative introduced The Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, and Biden signed it. Among other things, this law created an exception to the 2006 law and authorized the USPS to offer additional services to raise revenue. Did the Democrats unknowingly allow themselves to be manipulated by reforming the law to allow the Post Office to offer new services?

After months of pressure and complaints from postal workers, DeJoy agreed to pause his 10-Year Delivering for America plan until after the 2024 election. Was DeJoy purposely sabotaging the Postal Service in order to pave the way for its restoration?

Is President Trump drawing attention to the Postal Service's mismanagement by keeping it in the public eye and highlighting its financial losses, in order to gain support for a plan to reform it? Is he distracting from his goal of rebuilding the Postal Service by pushing for its privatization? Since federal law establishes the Postal Service as a core function of the government, the President doesn’t have the authority to privatize it. That would require an act of Congress.

I’m old enough to remember when the Post Office was an honorable and respected organization. Is President Trump planning to restore the Post Office to its former glory, making it a vital and respected part of the federal government once more?