Donald Trump's dirtiest 2020 election trick involves messing with the US Postal Service

The US election campaign is back and it's as ugly as ever.

Mere minutes after Joe Biden announced his running mate Kamala Harris, Donald Trump's team released an attack ad labelling her as "phony" and a member of the "radical left".

The President has since repeatedly called her "nasty". And he's trying out a new insult, calling her "a Madwoman".

In response, Senator Harris didn't pull any punches, attempting to hit the President where it hurts in her first public comments since the announcement.

"He inherited the longest economic expansion in history from Barack Obama and Joe Biden," she read off the auto-cue.

No one should be surprised that, with less than 80 days until the election, the gloves are coming off.

But there's something else happening, largely out of sight, that's being seen by some as one of the dirtiest tricks of all.

Coronavirus has thrown election planning into chaos

With America still confirming close to 60,000 new COVID-19 infections every day, many fear traditional polling booths will act like petri-dishes.

Wary voters, especially those with underlying conditions, have been turning to absentee ballots in droves.

When the state of Georgia voted in its primary elections in June, there was a 2,500 per cent increase in returned absentee ballots.

The state of New York took six weeks to count the deluge of mail-in votes from its primary contest.

New York City invalidated almost one in five of the ballots, prompting multiple lawsuits from furious candidates.

It's a worrying sign of things to come in November

In preparation, one could reasonably expect the White House would be doing everything it can to shore up the electoral system and the US Postal Service that will be so crucial in making it work.

But it seems the President is doing the opposite.

The Trump administration's newly appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is a major Republican donor and a close ally of Trump.

In his first public comments last Friday, Dejoy laid out a "transformational process" to "change and improve" the US Postal Service.

He may have a worthy long-term plan to do just that, but right now, when getting mail through on time has never been more important, it's causing significant disruptions.

No fewer than 23 USPS executives have been displaced or reassigned.

There's a hiring freeze, a ban on overtime and additional delivery runs have been stopped.

There are claims mail sorting equipment has been removed with letters already beginning to pile up in post offices.

Warnings of an election meltdown sounded for months

As early as March, Democrats were pushing to include additional funding for voting by mail in a Coronavirus stimulus bill.

At that time, Trump openly stated his resistance was political, claiming his opponents were seeking "levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again."

He quickly shifted tack, repeatedly warning about the risk of "voter fraud" and a "rigged election" should there be a surge in mail-in votes.

Some election experts have suggested mail-in voting is more susceptible to fraud than voting in person, but studies have shown all forms of voter fraud are extremely rare in America.

Democrats are still pushing for $US3.5 billion for universal mail-in voting, along with a $25 billion boost for the Postal Service. The President's Republican allies are still refusing to allow it.

Today, in an interview on Fox Business, President Trump explicitly stated why he doesn't want it to happen.

"Now they need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots," he said.

In other words, he knows the post office won't "work" effectively during the election without an injection of funds.

"The President is sabotaging a basic service that hundreds of millions of people rely upon… because he wants to deprive Americans of their fundamental right to vote safely," said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Presidential challenger Joe Biden.

What is Trump's plan?

Perhaps the President was just preparing the ground for a Republican retreat.

Soon after his comments, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters that senior Trump advisers had indicated a willingness to support new funding.

If Trump doesn't reverse course, it's a chillingly cynical exercise, one that ultimately presents a problem for voters who are worried about the coronavirus.

If applications for ballots get lost in the mail or empty ballots show up late, should voters risk their health by showing up at polling stations in-person?

Enthusiasm for Trump amongst his core supporters is rock solid.

Many Trump fans aren't too worried about the coronavirus, and those who are will likely risk life and limb anyway to make sure he's re-elected.

Driving across the battleground states of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania for a recent Foreign Correspondent story, we saw dozens and dozens of flags and lawn signs for Trump 2020.

We didn't see a single one for Joe Biden.

If the overall turnout in November is low, it's more likely to help Trump.