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The U.S. Postal Service had enough problems even before President Donald Trump tried to transform the agency into a de facto election regulation hub that would have had the power to reject ballots heading to voters this November.
That plan was quashed by the Supreme Court after a tumultuous legal battle. But that hasn’t taken the spotlight off the Postal Service, which is still facing a lot of questions about how prepared it is to handle the massive flow of ballots moving around the country over the next four weeks.
The Postal Service has lost money for decades. Since 2007, the agency has lost $118 billion. Despite a mantra that “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” would keep the mail from getting through, the Postal Service is charging customers more and delivering some mail more slowly. Things are so bad that the Postmaster General has warned that the agency could run out of cash early next year.
The problems are a concern for tens of millions of Americans expected to vote by mail in this November’s elections. This year, the challenges could be compounded by belt-tightening measures that could lead to more ballots being rejected if voters aren’t paying attention.
The so-called Regional Transportation Optimization plan the agency rolled out last year has reduced pickup times at more than 15,000 post offices that are more than 50 miles from a regional processing center. That means a ballot could sit in a local post office and not get a postmark until the following day.
For people dropping off their ballots at the last minute, that could mean the difference between their votes being counted or rejected. The problems are likely to have the biggest impact on rural areas, which tend to be more likely to vote for Republicans.
Oregon has been an early case study in how the system works — or doesn’t. Oregon, which was the first state to shift to voting entirely by mail in 1998, was part of the Postal Service pilot project testing the consolidation process. The results were not encouraging. The Postal Service’s own audit found that performance declined and complaints increased.
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Most importantly for voters, Oregon has seen an increase in ballots being rejected because they weren’t postmarked as required by Election Day. During the primary election this past May, more than 7,300 ballots that might have been counted when they came in after Election Day were rejected because they didn’t have a proper postmark, amounting to a 13% rejection rate, up from 9.5% in 2024.
That set off some alarm bells in Oregon, which is trying to address the problems and ensure that fewer ballots are rejected this November.
Leading the charge is Secretary of State Tobias Read, a Democrat who has worked to expand the state’s ballot drop box system, which operates independently of the Postal Service. Oregon has more than 320 drop boxes. More than 60% of all Oregon voters used drop boxes in 2024, but it’s much easier for people in urban areas to use them than those in rural areas, where it can take an hour or more to reach one. Read just got state lawmakers to add another 20 for the November election to help expand the system’s reach.
Read is so worried about postal delays that he’s encouraging people to send ballots back a week before the election or instead plan to secure a postmark or vote another way.
“We can’t count on it,” said Read, referring to the Postal Service. “It might work, but I don’t want anyone to be taking a chance with their ballot.”
Voters who send their ballots back close to Election Day should go into the post office and ask workers to manually postmark the ballot, Read said.
“It’s not that the Postal Service is something you should avoid,” he said. “Just do it early if you’re going to use the mail.”
The Postal Service itself is also encouraging voters to send their ballots back well before Election Day to ensure they are counted. The agency has a 90-second public service announcement on its website urging people to “mail early.” For some voters, the agency suggests that people send their ballots in at least a week before the deadline.
In Washington, Secretary of State Steve Hobbs is going further and urging people to send in their ballots 10 days before the deadlines to ensure that they aren’t rejected. The problem with ballots being rejected because of late postmarks skyrocketed in some Washington counties by more than 300% between the 2024 primary and the 2026 primary.
Like Read, Hobbs, a Democrat, is encouraging people to use a drop box to return their ballots – and make sure they make a plan to ensure their vote is counted.
“If you’re going to mail, you better do it right away,” he said. “Don’t wait.”
Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
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