A political fight over adding billions in funding to the U.S. Postal Service broke out this week on Capitol Hill between Democrats and President Donald Trump, with both sides trying to pin the issue on mail-in voting. The USPS, which has been perpetually in the red for well over a decade, reported another $2.2 billion in loses this past quarter, bringing its total losses to $78 billion since 2007. In other words, this is not a new problem for the USPS. As the Government Accountability Office bluntly notes, the “USPS’s current business model is not financially sustainable.”

House Democrats are using the pandemic to press for $25 billion for the Postal Service to backfill “revenue forgone due to the coronavirus” as part of the latest relief package. Furthermore, they are demanding an additional $3.5 billion for their vote-by-mail scheme. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy claims that, in its current state, “the Postal Service has ample capacity to deliver all election mail securely and on-time.”

Trump pushed back against the Democrats’ dubious demands, stating, “They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots. Now in the meantime, they aren’t getting there. … 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.” Clearly, Trump is more than willing to play the Democrats’ game. He countered their ultimatum by simply agreeing it has everything to do with mail-in voting, which is a recipe for massive voting fraud.

On the subject of in-person voting during the pandemic, on Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci directly addressed the issue, throwing cold water on the Democrats’ claims that the coronavirus justifies their demands for massive mail-in voting. Pointing out that people have for months been safely going out to grocery stores, Fauci stated, “If you go and wear a mask, if you observe the physical distancing and don’t have a crowded situation, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to [vote in person].” Noting that people who don’t feel comfortable voting in person already have the option of mailing in their vote, he added, “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to vote, in person or otherwise.”

The fact of the matter is that there is no legitimate reason for the Democrats’ demands to upend the nation’s long-practiced in-person voting system in favor of implementing a hastily concocted mail-in voting scheme.

As Attorney General William Barr cogently observed, “We have had very close races in recent history. The country is divided. If anything, we should be assuring the integrity of our elections, so that government going forward will be legitimate and will be accepted as legitimate. The idea of conducting our elections by wholesale mail-in ballots is reckless and wrong. Everyone knows what has happened in these cases. We are not talking about voters going, requesting a ballot specifically, saying who they are, proving who they are, and then submitting a ballot by mail. We are talking mail-outs to everyone on the voting list. … The idea that you, without any request from the voter, will mail out your voting list, all these thousands and thousands of ballots, is scary, because most of those mailings go to a lot of addresses where the people no longer live. They’re misdirected and I think … they could easily create a situation where there’s going to be a contested election.”

Update: 8/17/20: Yet another example of the significant if not certainty of mail-in voting being ripe for fraud, Nevada sent more than 200,000 primary ballots to the wrong address.