The U.S. Postal Service has removed mail processing machines from facilities in Kansas City, Wichita and Springfield, according to a local union official, who fears their loss could slow mail delivery.

The decommissioned machines in Kansas and Missouri are among a wave of removals at postal facilities nationwide, sparking fears President Donald Trump will attempt to thwart voting by mail this fall. Trump earlier this week said blocking funding for USPS would halt mail-in voting.

Officials in two postal unions said Friday that mail processing machines have been removed from USPS facilities.

Antoinette Robinson, president of the American Postal Workers Union Greater Kansas City Metro Area Local, said USPS was removing machines nationally. National Postal Mail Handlers Union Local 297 President Chris Bentley said four machines in Kansas City, one in Wichita and two in Springfield were removed earlier this summer.

USPS management didn’t provide many reasons for removing the machines, Bentley said, adding that workers were told that mail volume is down. He said mail volume always declines in the summer, though, before picking up in the fall.

“The predictions are to be a busy fall mailing season and not having machines in place is going to be troublesome,” Bentley said.

The removal of Kansas and Missouri machines was first reported by CNN.

At full speed, each machine can process 30,000 to 40,000 pieces of mail an hour, Bentley said. He said he didn’t know how many machines remain in each location. The employees who were assigned to the machines haven’t been laid off, he said, adding that they’ve been reassigned.

Mark Inglett, a Kansas City-based spokesman for USPS, confirmed the removal of the machines, but he called it a routine and necessary process to improve operations in the region.

“We are retiring older, out of date equipment so that we can expand our newer sorting equipment that can handle as many as 30,000 letters a minute,” Inglett said in a statement. “This will increase our capacity and our efficiency to handle increased package volume as well any current letter and flat volume. This is a multi-year effort that prepares us for the future.”

Record numbers of Americans are expected to vote by mail this fall because of concerns about COVID-19.

The Postal Service, which relies on sales of postage for funding rather than tax revenue, has taken a financial hit during the pandemic. But Trump has resisted proposals to bail out the agency and made baseless claims that increased mail voting will lead to voter fraud.

Bentley said slowing down mail delivery and processing “seems to be the policy at the moment.”

“For some reason, literally 200 years plus of good postal on-time delivery now is no longer a priority, it seems,” he said.

The Postal Service sent a letter last month to Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft cautioning that voters who cast ballots by mail in November should send them a full week before Election Day to ensure they are counted. The Washington Post reported dozens of states have received a similar letter.

On Thursday, the election board in Sedgwick County, Kansas, threw out 12 ballots that were mailed on time for the Aug. 4 primary election, but didn’t get delivered in time.

Under state law, mail ballots can only be counted if they’re postmarked on or before a Tuesday election day and received by the election office by the following Friday.

Of the dozen rejected ballots, nine were postmarked on election day or the day before, but didn’t arrive until the Monday after the election. Only one came from overseas, mailed in Guam on July 27 and arriving Aug. 11, a week after the election but three days before the final canvassing.

A record 261,182 Kansas voters cast their ballots by mail in last week’s primary, according to the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office. For contrast, 36,532 voted by mail in the 2016 primary.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat, said he’s been talking to postal workers in Kansas City that the changes are intended to lay the groundwork for the privatization of the Postal Service, an independent agency that traces its roots to Benjamin Franklin.

“People are concerned about their jobs. People are concerned that the postal service is going to collapse,” Cleaver said. “I don’t think it’s paranoia. The country is watching in slow motion the destruction of the U.S. Postal Service. It’s been around since the 1770s.”

Cleaver warned that rural areas where many people rely on the agency to deliver medication and other essential supplies would be the most adversely affected by the changed.

Rep. Sharice Davids, a Democrat who represents the Kansas side of the Kansas City metro area, hadn’t heard of any machine removals on her side of the border. But Davids, whose mother works at a postal distribution center in Kansas City, Kan., said it was shocking to see this kind of activity.

“I can tell you we’ve been getting inundated with folks either writing in or calling in because they’re so concerned about the Postal Service and the president’s actions to undermine the Postal Service,” Davids said.

Davids earlier this week called for Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed by Trump, to be fired.

“What we need right now is for our Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate to make sure that they’re informing the president just how important the Postal Service is and I’ve not seen that,” Davids said.

Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran’s office said Friday he has been requesting a meeting with DeJoy since June to discuss restructuring plans, but so far those requests have gone rebuffed.

For the postal workers, the national controversy has been demoralizing, according to Robinson. Her union members are frustrated, she said.

“It is hard, especially for the people in the processing plan because they’re there, they’re working 12 hours plus a night getting this mail out,” Robinson said. “Then to hear all of this going on, on the television, it’s frustrating.”

She continued: “But like I tell them, ‘Hey, we know we do. We know what we do … nobody can take that from us.’”

Contributing: Dion Lefler of The Wichita Eagle