USPS is delivering ballots quickly and on time

The U.S. Postal Service is overwhelmingly delivering ballots at a rapid pace, ensuring the election mail gets to voters and back to local officials more efficiently than its normal deliveries.  

The agency was seeing success even before it began taking its special election season steps to expedite election mail processing. Through the first three weeks of October, USPS delivered 97.8% of election mail pieces on time according to its delivery windows and 99.9% were delivered within seven days. 

That performance comes despite many parts experiencing slower mail delivery overall in 2024, though it is roughly in line with how USPS delivered ballots in 2020 and 2022. The Postal Service is delivering ballots in 1.4 days on average and within one day of its expected delivery time in 98.3% of cases. 

USPS this week began instituting “extraordinary measures” to ensure ballots are sent out and returned quickly, a series of steps it typically implements near elections and that it is currently required to put in place under a settlement agreement with the NAACP. They consist of extra deliveries and collections, special pickups, expanded hours at processing plants, Sunday collections and visual checks of various points for ballots. The Postal Service was already conducting daily sweeps and “all clears” at its facilities for ballots, and ensuring postmarks for any piece of mail identified as a ballot.

Prior to those measures going into effect, Steve Monteith, USPS’ chief customer and marketing officer, said on Wednesday some issues with election mail had cropped up in local areas, but he noted they were quickly addressed. Those issues occurred due to either USPS error or mistakes from election boards, such as issues with election mail design, but the agency has a “laser-like focus” on quickly smoothing out any bumps in the road. 

“We take every report of delayed election mail very seriously, and we strive to resolve all issues that come in,” Monteith said. “There have been some issues. We've worked to resolve these issues as we’ve moved forward.” 

He added USPS has established teams to directly respond to any issues that state and local officials flag and there has been constant communication back and forth. Adrienne Marshall, USPS' election and government mail services director, said Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and other members of the postal leadership team have been in regular contact with governors and state secretaries of state to hear any concerns they have. USPS ramped up those efforts after local election officials in all 50 states last month voiced concern in a letter to DeJoy that his agency’s failures threatened prompt and thorough election mail delivery.

Early results on ballot processing have lagged in some key areas compared to the national average. In Georgia, for example, only 87.4% of ballots were delivered on time and average delivery was 2.2 days through from Oct. 1 through Oct. 11. 

Postal management has warned its data is incomplete as USPS workers frequently pull ballots out of the normal mailstream to more rapidly get them to voters or back to local officials. For the same reason, some ballots marked as late may have simply not received a final scan because they bypassed normal processing. Additionally, not all election mail pieces have trackable barcodes. 

DeJoy has promised to make “all necessary resources” available to support election mail delivery and noted the agency has a “robust and tested process” for election season. Still, while postal management has stressed election mail represents a small drop in the bucket of its total volume—0.1% during the election period in 2020—it has repeatedly implored voters to send their ballots in as early as possible. 

DeJoy is also pausing some of his key initiatives as part of his Delivering for America plan to stabilize USPS operations and finances until after the election. The Postal Service’s inspector general recently found some of those changes, which have led to sharp increases in mail delays in some areas, threatened the agency’s election performance. 

The postmaster general has paused the rolling out of its “optimized collection plan” that requires mail to sit overnight at post offices instead of being collected each evening for transportation to a processing center. The sites that have already implemented the new collection schedules began receiving extra transportation for ballots this week. DeJoy previously announced that most of his processing plant consolidation efforts not already underway would be paused until at least Jan. 1, 2025.

Brendan Donahue, assistant inspector in charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, said his agency is taking a number of steps to ensure the safe delivery of mailed ballots. His inspectors and other staff are physically observing election mail processing and delivery operations and any issues are being flagged to USPIS and USPS management for corrective action. 

The Postal Service said it is also working closely with officials in areas impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton to address mail disruptions. All processing facilities in North Carolina and Florida are now open, as well most post offices and other delivery units, and USPS has nearly eliminated the undelivered mail in those states.