Trump could cut the vote by slowing the mail. Congress should stop him.

The president who ran on the slogan “Make America Great Again” appears to be bent on diminishing one of the nation’s oldest and most quintessentially American institutions – the U.S. Postal Service.

Why? Maybe because President Trump fears a robust mail-in vote this November will make him a private citizen again.

Behind in the polls and facing a surge of people planning to vote by mail because of the pandemic, Trump claims that mail-in voting is ripe for massive fraud although there is no evidence of it, even in states that routinely conduct their elections mostly by mail.

Unable to scare states into tightening their vote-by-mail laws, Trump has turned to a Republican fundraiser with no postal experience to rattle the postal system as the election draws near. Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor and Greensboro businessman appointed as postmaster general in May, has purged the Postal Service’s leadership and ordered cost-cutting measures. Those moves have demoralized and alarmed postal workers, slowed the delivery of mail and stirred doubts among voters that mailed ballots will be delivered by the deadline for the Nov. 3 election.

DeJoy’s hobbling of the postal system is a special concern to North Carolina, which has the nation’s second largest rural population. In many small towns out of the reach of private delivery services, residents and businesses rely on the post office for delivery of products purchased online, medicines, and bills along with cards and letters.

North Carolina Congresswoman Alma S. Adams, a Democrat representing Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, has helped lead the Congressional resistance to DeJoy’s changes. Last week, she called for the postmaster to resign.

“He’s trying to dismantle the post office in order to disrupt the election. He needs to go.” Adams told the Editorial Board on Tuesday.

Even conservatives who otherwise support Trump’s agenda should reject his political, self-serving assault on this nonpartisan service that serves everyone.

Trump’s move against USPS is the latest attempt by him and Republicans in Congress to unravel the system that has knit the nation together since it was established by the U.S. Constitution. He has called the Postal Service “a joke” and favors privatizing the service. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans refuse to relieve the Postal Service of an onerous requirement imposed in 2006 that it fund its retiree health benefits up to 75 years in the future, an obligation that has put the once profitable service in the red for the last 13 years.

The mistreatment of the USPS continued with the COVID-19 relief bill. Billions of dollars in assistance went to corporations, but there was no direct aid to support a service that is a lifeline for many who are sheltering at home and will be a key element of the upcoming election.

As of Sunday, 163,374 North Carolina voters had requested mail-in ballots, more than seven times the requests submitted at the same point in 2016. The breakdown by party makes it clear why Trump may be worried. In North Carolina in July, requests for mail-in ballots were up more than 600 percent for Democratic and unaffiliated voters. Republican requests were up only 40 percent.

On the eve of the most important election in a generation, a Republican president who lost the popular vote in 2016 is planting falsehoods about mail-in ballots and slowing down the movement of the mail. His aim is to inhibit the Postal Service from delivering an essential message this November – the will of the people.

Congress needs to block this autocratic ploy to disrupt the flow of the U.S. mail and the exercise of democracy. Republicans and Democrats together should demand DeJoy’s ouster and approve funding relief for the Postal Service to ensure that democracy does not get lost in the mail.