Postal Service says it's prepared for influx of mail-in ballots

David Sharp
| Associated Press

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy assured state election officials in a letter released Monday that he will work with them to address their warnings about mail delivery issues during the primary season, while insisting that the Postal Service will be prepared to handle the flood of mail-in ballots ahead of the November election.

The Postal Service has already addressed most of the concerns raised by election officials, he said, after warning that properly addressed election mail was being returned — a problem that can result in voters being automatically placed on inactive status — and that mail-in ballots were being postmarked on time but arriving after election deadlines.

DeJoy said training for postal workers is already being stepped up and that the Postal Service is already in constant contact with election officials and will work with them to resolve quality issues that have led to incorrect deliveries or mail being returned to the sender. He also said he will work with them to prevent “poorly designed ballot envelopes” from happening again, though many envelopes have already been designed and printed, officials said.

The Postal Service also has teams in place to handle mail marked as “undeliverable as addressed” or any other issues that may arise with election mail, DeJoy wrote.

Those concerns have been raised by the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors, even as former President Donald Trump continues to falsely claim he won in 2020 and has used mail delivery problems to sow doubt about the upcoming election. He reiterated on social media Sunday his claim that the Postal Service is not up to the task.

In 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, election officials reported sending out just over 69 million ballots by mail, a substantial increase from four years earlier.

Even though the number of mail-in ballots is lower this year, many voters have embraced and come to rely on mail-in voting. Both Democrats and Republicans have launched efforts to encourage their supporters to vote early, either in person or by mail, in order to “bank” their votes before Election Day on Nov. 5. In a sign of how quickly Election Day is approaching, the first batch of mail-in ballots was sent to absentee voters in Alabama last week.

Steve Simon, president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, on Monday confirmed his assessment that the Postal Service has been slow to address concerns. He said localized problems can be easily fixed, but “larger problems remain.”

“If election officials across the country had believed that these issues had been properly addressed with USPS staff over the past year, then our letter would not have been necessary,” he said, referring to their expression of concerns last week.

In his response, DeJoy acknowledged that a massive network reorganization had caused some temporary problems, but assured both bipartisan groups that the changes were being put on hold to avoid slowing down election mail before the November election.

He suggested that the Postal Service’s performance in past elections should speak for itself.

Postal Service officials said nearly 98% of ballots were returned to election officials within three days, and 99.9% of ballots were delivered within seven days during the last presidential election, at the height of the pandemic in 2020.

“As has been demonstrated repeatedly in past elections, election mail consistently outperforms our typical service performance due to our long-standing processes and procedures,” DeJoy wrote.

First-class mail currently takes an average of 2.7 days to be delivered, DeJoy said, though the two groups wrote in a letter last week that some election officials have received postmarked ballots late after Election Day and outside the three to five business days the Postal Service sets as the standard for first-class mail.

Still, DeJoy said, voters shouldn’t procrastinate on voting by mail during this election season. The Postal Service and state election officials are urging anyone voting by mail to return their ballots well in advance of Election Day or use drop boxes, if available.

Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.