A USPS Issue Could Impact The 2026 Midterms | EUROtoday

Changes on the U.S. Postal Service are poised to make a recognized downside even worse, and it may have an effect on hundreds of voters on this yr’s midterm elections.

Fourteen states — plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands — have a grace interval wherein mail-in ballots may be counted after Election Day, so long as they’re postmarked on time, and lots of extra states have comparable lodging for army and abroad voters.

But there’s a noteworthy downside that’s poised to get even worse, in line with USPS: Mail can go a full day or extra with out receiving a postmark, and such delays “will become more common” due to cost-cutting efforts.

According to new language within the USPS Domestic Mail Manual that went into impact on Christmas Eve, postmark dates “do not necessarily represent either the place at which, or the date on which, the Postal Service first accepted possession of the mailpiece.”

“It is becoming more common that you’ll have some pieces [of mail] that won’t be postmarked that same day that they’re entered into the system,” Cathy Purcell, a spokesperson for the Postal Service, informed HuffPost.

The discrepancy means voters who mail absentee ballots again to election officers near Election Day threat being disenfranchised.

“The people that are going to be impacted are the ones that turn ballots in on the deadline,” Deak Kersey, deputy secretary and chief of employees to West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner, informed HuffPost, referring to individuals who “stick it in the blue box at 9 a.m. on Election Day.”

Out of the roughly 47.6 million mailed ballots that had been returned by voters for the 2024 common election, 584,463 had been rejected, in line with a report from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Of these, 17.8% — or about 100,000 ballots — had been rejected for lacking a state deadline. It’s unclear what number of ballots had been affected by a late postmark.

Given the recognition of mail-in voting — throughout celebration affiliation, location and demographics — the more and more widespread lag between mail coming into the system and it receiving a postmark may make a distinction in shut elections.

“I’m deeply concerned that USPS is doubling down on making it harder for Oregonians, especially rural Oregonians, to vote,” Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read informed HuffPost in an announcement. “We’re already taking action, providing updated guidance to make sure every legal vote gets counted, and we’ll continue to sound the alarm: This is a threat to Oregonians’ right to hold government accountable.”

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar famous that “mail ballots were the #1 choice for Nevada voters across rural and urban populations” and mentioned his workplace was “looking into innovative methods to ensure that mail ballots are received and counted in a timely manner – including looking into the regulatory process and researching technology tools to verify acceptance of mail ballots that meet Nevada law.”

“I am concerned about this, because this new rule may disenfranchise voters, because they might just drop [their ballot] off in the USPS system and not think about the whole postmark issue, that it’s going to be delayed a little bit more than in past years,” Jared DeMarinis, Maryland’s state administrator of elections, informed HuffPost on Wednesday.

Like different election officers HuffPost spoke to, DeMarinis mentioned his state — the place over 800,000 individuals voted by mail in 2024 — would encourage voters to return ballots early or use state poll drop packing containers, which he mentioned are safe, underneath fixed surveillance and permit voters to keep away from the mail system totally. Almost all states with mail-in voting permit ballots to be returned on to election officers, as effectively.

And any voter also can request a free handbook postmark in individual at retail USPS places, to make sure that the postmark displays the date the poll entered the mailstream.

The Postal Service has mentioned that its course of for making use of postmarks has not modified, and that it solely pursued the brand new Domestic Mail Manual language to make clear longstanding realities — specifically, that postmarks are typically utilized by machines at centralized processing facilities, not at public-facing retail places.

But the company can also be present process a big reorganization that it says will make the appliance of postmarks the day after mail is shipped extra widespread.

“While our postmarking practices have not changed, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mailpieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed. Because postmarks are generally applied at those processing facilities, this means that the date on the postmarks applied at those facilities may not necessarily match the date of mailing,” Purcell informed HuffPost.

The reorganization takes the type of a 10-year plan, dubbed “Delivering for America,” that then-Postmaster Louis DeJoy introduced in 2021. It’s the Postal Service’s method of slicing prices sufficient to remain solvent whereas receiving no taxpayer {dollars} and assembly on-time supply targets, and contains “eliminating redundant networks,” “eliminating unnecessary facilities” and slicing transportation between native put up workplaces and regional hubs from twice to as soon as every day, in lots of circumstances.

That latter step has affected hundreds of put up workplace places, and provides a day to mail supply occasions for places which might be 50 miles or extra from some 60 regional processing facilities, although Postal Service officers have argued that the reorganization saves time elsewhere.

Tammy Patrick, chief applications officer on the Election Center, a analysis and schooling group that caters to election officers and others concerned in election administration, mentioned the reorganization displays longer-term modifications in the way in which Americans use the mail system — extra packages, fewer letters. Still, she mentioned, the modifications may have an effect on all kinds of election-related actions, even in states the place voting legal guidelines don’t have particular language about postmarks on mail-in ballots.

“Voter registration will be the first thing that will hit, all across the country, particularly in states without online voter registration,” Patrick mentioned.

“There are always changes from one election cycle to the next, it seems, and it doesn’t mean that there’s a change everywhere, for every election,” she added. “But this is one of those changes that does affect pretty much every state in one way or another.”

The Postal Service argued in November that Americans should know the reality about postmark delays.

“If customers are aware that the postmark date may not align with the date on which the Postal Service first accepted possession of a mailpiece, they will be better equipped to adjust their plans accordingly,” the company mentioned. “And if policymakers or other entities that create rules utilizing the postmark date are aware of what the postmark date signifies, they are better equipped to determine whether their rules adequately serve their purposes.”

Like many points in election administration, this one may change dramatically based mostly on a pending courtroom resolution.

The Supreme Court in November agreed to listen to a problem to Mississippi’s apply of counting votes postmarked by Election Day. Arguments will happen someday this yr, with a call anticipated in June or July.

If the courtroom decides such legal guidelines aren’t constitutional, “then we have to back up the date from when ballots have to be received,” mentioned Kersey of the West Virginia secretary of state’s workplace. “You add in the Postal Service’s new delays [and] that really pours fuel on the fire for getting a ballot counted in time.”

That new schedule, he mentioned, may have dramatic political implications.

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