USPS to mail voters: Send in your ballots now

Voters should send their ballots back to their elections offices by Tuesday, the U.S. Postal Service is warning, particularly for those in states that must receive the ballots by Election Day.

USPS issued the advice to give the mail system a week to process ballots despite the agency so far sorting and delivering election mail quickly and on time. Sending ballots in by Oct. 29 would virtually eliminate any risk of them arriving late, however, as the Postal Service has so far this month delivered 99.9% of ballots on time. 

Voters who opt not to send their ballots by Tuesday will still have some wiggle room to get them to election offices on time. Through the first three weeks of October, ballots going from voters to election officials were delivered in just one day on average. That occurred before USPS began taking its special election season steps to expedite election mail processing last week. 

The Postal Service is now taking “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. USPS 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.

Even before those steps went into place, USPS delivered 98.3% of ballots from voters to election officials within three days. 

Still, the Postal Service said on Monday it was “a good idea” to send ballots by Tuesday. It made clear even those entered into the system after Tuesday would be targeted for accelerated processing. Postal workers, for example, frequently pull ballots out of the normal mailstream to more rapidly get them to voters or back to local officials. USPS sometimes bypasses normal processing to take those pulled ballots directly to election offices. 

Postal officials said last week that it has quickly resolved any ballot delivery delays that have cropped up in local areas and senior leadership has been in regular contact with governors and state secretaries of state to address their concerns. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service also said it is monitoring ballot processing and delivery to ensure its security. 

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy paused some of his key initiatives as part of his 10-year stabilization plan until after the election.