Washington (AFP)

Late mail, mailboxes removed from the streets ... Donald Trump is accused by his opponents of doing everything to destroy the American public postal service, in order to make impossible a postal vote that could, according to him, favor his opponent Joe Biden.

The presidential campaign has crystallized in recent days around the American post office, the USPS, and reforms carried out with great speed by its new boss, Louis DeJoy.

Several dozen people demonstrated outside his home in Washington on Saturday morning. "Stop removing voters" ("Stop voting suppression") read a sign held up by one of them.

Louis DeJoy, close to Donald Trump, is also one of the major donors to his campaign.

The reforms he has undertaken to bring the post office's accounts green have come under heavy criticism, suspected of actually being aimed at preventing postal voting for the presidential election on November 3.

The opposition sees the hand of Donald Trump, candidate for re-election, who has been shouting for months at the fraud announced if postal voting is more widely deployed this year than in the past due to the pandemic.

"We can not let Donald Trump destroy" the USPS (United States Postal Service), denounced Friday on Twitter Kamala Harris, running mate of Democratic candidate for the White House Joe Biden.

- "Pure Trump" -

It was first of all the frequent mail delays complained of by Americans that raised questions.

Then machines, deemed obsolete, were removed from sorting centers. And some cities have seen their mailboxes disappear from the streets, to save money.

The USPS especially recently warned US states, according to information from the Washington Post, that it could not deliver in time millions of ballots to be counted by November 3.

The Democrats want to bail out this bicentennial public service, whose white and blue vans roam the roads of the United States, sliding door open.

It is about "financing (...) safe and fair elections for our country", indicated Nancy Pelosi, the democratic president of the House of Representatives, in a letter to her colleagues on Saturday.

But this is out of the question for Donald Trump. The president made it clear Thursday in an interview with conservative Fox News that he does not want to bail out the USPS so that it is "not equipped" for "a generalized mail vote", which he does not want.

His Democratic competitor for the White House Joe Biden had then taunted him: "Pure Trump. He does not want an election."

Former President Barack Obama also reacted: "We had never before seen a president say + I will bring the postal service to its knees (...) and I will clearly say why +".

- Prepare minds -

If Donald Trump is opposed to the postal vote, it is, according to some observers, to prepare the spirits in order to be able to contest a possible defeat.

"At the very least, he wants to raise enough questions for people to lose confidence," said Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU).

Donald Trump also knows that this could encourage the vote of African-American and Hispanic voters, who are more abstinent because of their often more precarious situation. As the election takes place during the week, it is indeed necessary to leave work to go and vote, and therefore lose money.

He is also aware that Democratic voters are generally more inclined to vote by mail than those on his side.

"We do not slow down electoral mail, or any other mail," assured a spokesman for the USPS, citing the financial problems of the institution.

In deficit since 2008, it has suffered for twenty years from the boom in the Internet and the fall in mail volumes. Privatization has long been mentioned among Republicans.

Donald Trump, however, hinted on Friday, for the first time, that he could resolve to open the wallet. "It's not what I want, it's what the American people want," he said at a press conference.

© 2020 AFP