The United States Postal Service is like many of our traditional institutions – beleaguered, in many ways broken, but essential to our way of life.

The mail delivers life-saving medication and sorely needed benefit checks to many of our most vulnerable neighbors. It contributes in a small but vital way to the function of municipal governments and our system of justice.

For millions of Americans the most direct connection to the Postal Service is the ways it keeps us connected – through holiday cards from friends and family, through letters and care packages from distant loved ones.

Like so many other institutions – including our own here at the newspaper – the mail has struggled to adapt in a rapidly changing world. Technology has radically changed the way we communicate, and utilizing a centuries-old model, trusted though it may be, is no longer sustainable from a logistical or financial standpoint.

This year, of course, has accelerated the pace of disruption beyond what anyone could have predicted. The coronavirus pandemic has thrown our public health system, economy and political system into unprecedented turmoil – all in a year that brings both a census and a presidential election.

It has been deeply disturbing in recent days to follow murky developments surrounding the Postal Service. Most readers are likely at least broadly acquainted with what has been happening, but to summarize, a range of operational changes were underway that appeared all but certain to drastically affect the timeliness and effectiveness of mail delivery.

That the changes were being implemented by a political appointee of, and donor to, President Trump did not help appearances. Nor did the president’s public comments suggesting that depriving the Postal Service of funding would accomplish his objective of limiting mail-in voting – a practice he has repeatedly, and baselessly, decried as inherently fraudulent.

It was heartening on Tuesday, then, to read news that Postmaster Louis DeJoy, caving to mounting public pressure and numerous legal actions, has announced he will “suspend” the controversial changes until after November’s election. DeJoy is set to testify before the U.S. Senate this week to answer questions about this episode.

While the worst appears, for now, to have been avoided, the scrutiny and watchfulness must not cease. The American people deserve answers about what has transpired. So, too, to the dedicated and often unheralded employees of the Postal Service.

This is about more than the president’s manufactured mail-in voting controversy. It is even about more than the integrity of our electoral process and the ability of all Americans to vote safely, although those must remain paramount.

This is about preserving the most fundamental aspects of our way of life, the few things upon which all Americans rely and agree upon.

The Postal Service, clearly, is in need of overhaul. It needs, and deserves, to be reimagined in a way that is compatible with the 21st century. It is a system that has served us faithfully since the nation’s inception, and we must not abandon it.

But it cannot be so easily gutted and cast aside, whether callously, cynically or as part of a more malignant effort. If it is not immune from this corrosive age, then our problems are even greater than we believed.