by Steve Hutkins

Save the Post Office

In 2020, when the United States Postal Service began an ambitious plan to modernize and consolidate services in the middle of the pandemic. Its slow service wound up disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters whose ballots never made it to their elections offices in time.

Four years later – by some measures – USPS performance is now actually worse, with another nail-biter of an election fast-approaching.

Compounding the risk that slow mail could affect the election: NBC found some of the country’s slowest mail is in presidential swing states with strict mail ballot delivery deadlines.

“It’s a disgrace,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said of USPS delivery performance.  They need to understand the importance [of election mail] and they need to make no more excuses.

Get it in gear and take this seriously.”

Raffensperger – along with dozens of other Democratic and Republican state election directors – has called in recent weeks for Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to take immediate action to address USPS delays in order to avoid voter disenfranchisement and to preserve trust in elections.

But the situation is especially dire in Georgia, where officials have already spent years worrying about the possibility of a contested 2024 election for other reasons.

The Math in Georgia

Georgia is home to the country’s worst mail performance, largely due to a consolidation in processing centers earlier this year that is still causing major disruptions.  According to USPS quarterly statistics, only 66% of local first class letters since July have been delivered within two days, and less than 40% of election mail was delivered on-time last spring.  The USPS lists target goals of 92.5% for both metrics.

Georgia state records indicate thousands of ballots – more than 3% of all votes cast by mail in the primaries – were rejected for arriving late to elections offices.  In 2020, the state rejected just 0.23% of ballots for arriving late, according to the MIT Election Data + Science Lab, supporting Raffensperger’s belief that exceptionally slow 2024 mail is responsible for voter disenfranchisement.  Like 31 other states, Georgia requires mail ballots to be delivered to elections offices by Election Day.

If 3% of mail ballots are disqualified this November in Georgia – where Raffensperger says 300,000 Georgians may vote by mail – delivery delays could result in 9,000 voters never seeing their legitimate ballots counted.

DeJoy had promised U.S. senators back in April he’d “fix” Georgia’s problems “within 60 days.”  But more than 150 days later, Georgia still has the slowest mail in the country and falling far short of the USPS’ own benchmarks.

NBC also discovered today’s on-time performance numbers would look even worse, had the Postal Service not loosened its standards in 2022 for what it considers an on-time” delivery for first-class letters.

A spokesperson for the USPS pointed out that election mail has been given higher priority than first class letters ever since a federal judge ordered it in Sept. 2020, and that 99.9% of all election mail got to its destination within seven days in both 2020 and 2022.

“Election Mail routinely outperforms . . . regular service,” according to the spokesperson.

Postmaster Louis DeJoy also stressed to members of the media in August that voters should avoid dropping ballots in the mail within seven days of their state’s deadline, just to be safe.

He’s also consistently stood behind his plan to modernize and consolidate postal services, so the USPS can operate more efficiently and also without budget deficits.  But so far, neither goal has materialized.