A little-known problem is about to get worse at the post office

Changes at the United States Postal Service are about to make a known problem even worse and could affect thousands of voters in this year’s midterm elections.

fourteen states – in addition to Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands – have a grace period in which mail-in ballots can be counted after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked on time, and many more states have similar accommodations for military and foreign voters.

But there’s one noteworthy problem that’s about to get even worse, according to USPS: Mail can go a full day or more without receiving a postmark, and those delays “will become more common” thanks to cost-cutting efforts.

According new language In the USPS Domestic Mail Manual that went into effect on Christmas Eve, postmark dates “do not necessarily represent either the place or the date on which the Postal Service first accepted possession of the mail item.”

“It is increasingly common for you to have some pieces [of mail] That will not be postmarked on the same day they are entered into the system,” Postal Service spokesperson Cathy Purcell told News themezone.

The discrepancy means voters who send absentee ballots to election officials close to Election Day risk being disenfranchised.

“The people who will be affected are the ones who turn in their ballots by the deadline,” Deak Kersey, deputy secretary and chief of staff to West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner, told News themezone, referring to the people who “put them in the blue box at 9 a.m. on Election Day.”

Of the approximately 47.6 million mail-in ballots that were returned by voters for the 2024 general election, 584,463 were rejected, according to a report of those, 17.8% (or about 100,000 ballots) were rejected for missing a state deadline. It’s unclear how many ballots were affected by a late postmark.

Given the popularity of voting by mail… across Party affiliation, location and demographics: The increasingly common lag between mail entering the system and the time it receives the postmark could make the difference in close elections.

“I am deeply concerned that USPS is doubling down on its efforts to make it harder for Oregonians, especially in rural areas, to vote,” Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read told News themezone in a statement. “We are already taking action, providing updated guidance to ensure all legal votes are counted, and we will continue to sound the alarm: this is a threat to Oregonians’ right to hold their government accountable.”

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar noted that “mail ballots were the number one choice for Nevada voters in rural and urban populations” and said his office was “pursuing innovative methods to ensure mail ballots are received and counted in a timely manner, including investigating the regulatory process and investigating technological tools to verify the acceptance of mail ballots that comply with Nevada law.”

“I’m worried about this, because this new rule could disenfranchise voters, because they could just lose [their ballot] in the USPS system and not think about the whole postmark issue, which will be delayed a little longer than in previous years,” Jared DeMarinis, Maryland state elections administrator, told News themezone on Wednesday.

Like other election officials News themezone spoke to, DeMarinis said his state, where more than 800,000 people voted by mail in 2024, would encourage voters to return ballots early or use the state’s polls, which he said are secure, under constant surveillance and allow voters to bypass the mail system altogether. Almost all states with voting by mail allow ballots will also be returned directly to election officials.

And any voter can also request a free manual postmark in person at USPS retail stores, to ensure the postmark reflects the date the ballot entered the mail stream.

The Postal Service has said that its process for applying postmarks has not changed, and that it only followed the new language of the National Postal Manual to clarify long-standing realities, namely that postmarks are generally applied by machines in centralized processing centers, not in public-facing retail establishments.

But the agency is also undergoing a significant reorganization that it says will make applying postmarks the day after mail is sent more common.

“Although our postmark practices have not changed, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mail items not arriving at our origin processing facilities on the same day they are mailed. Because postmarks are typically applied at those processing facilities, this means that the date on the postmarks applied at those facilities may not necessarily match the mailing date,” Purcell told News themezone.

The reorganization takes the form of a ten-year plan, called “Delivering for America,” which then-postmaster Louis DeJoy announced in 2021. It’s the Postal Service’s way of cutting costs enough to stay solvent without taking taxpayer money and meet on-time delivery goals, and includes “eliminating redundant networks,” “eliminating unnecessary facilities,” and cutting transportation between local post offices and regional centers from two to once a day, in many cases.

This last step has affected thousands of post office locations and adds a day to mail delivery times for locations that are 50 miles or more from about 60 regional processing centers, although Postal Service officials have argued that the reorganization saves time elsewhere.

via News

Tammy Patrick, program director at the Election Center, a research and education organization that serves election officials and others involved in election administration, said the reorganization reflects long-term changes in the way Americans use the mail system: more packages, fewer letters. Still, he said, the changes could affect all kinds of election-related activities, even in states where election laws don’t have specific language about postmarking mail-in ballots.

“Voter registration will be the first thing it hits, across the country, particularly in states without online voter registration,” Patrick said.

“It seems like there are always changes from one election cycle to the next, and that doesn’t mean there is a change everywhere, for every election,” he added. “But this is one of those changes that affects virtually every state in one way or another.”

The postal service argument in November that Americans should know the truth about postmark delays.

“If customers are aware that the postmark date may not coincide with the date the Postal Service first accepted possession of a mail item, they will be better equipped to adjust their plans accordingly,” the agency said. “And if policymakers or other entities creating rules using the postmark date are aware of what the postmark date means, they will be better equipped to determine whether their rules adequately serve their purposes.”

Like many issues in election administration, this one could change dramatically based on a pending court decision.

The Supreme Court in November agreed to listen a challenge to Mississippi’s practice of counting votes postmarked by Election Day. Discussions will occur sometime this year with a decision expected in June or July.

If the court decides such laws are not constitutional, “then we have to support the date by which ballots must be received,” said Kersey, of the West Virginia secretary of state’s office. “Added to this are the new delays of the Postal Service [and] “That really adds fuel to the fire of getting a ballot counted on time.”

That new timeline, he said, could have dramatic political implications.

“What happens in those last 14 days of an election can sometimes change the outcome of an election,” he said.