State election officials warn Postal Service isn't ready for the election

Election officials from across the country publicly accused the postmaster general on Wednesday of failing to adequately prepare for the Nov. 5 general election.

In an unusually frank joint open letter, the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors said Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has failed to address numerous shortcomings in the U.S. Postal Service that election officials have said could lead to fewer people voting and a loss of trust in the electoral system.

“State and local election officials need a committed partner in USPS,” the letter reads. “We implore you to take immediate and tangible corrective action to address the ongoing performance issues with USPS election mail service. Failure to do so will risk limiting voter participation and trust in the election process.”

Voting by mail has become extremely popular since it was widely introduced in 2020, as states scrambled to change laws to allow citizens to cast ballots without risking crowds during the Covid pandemic. Nearly 70 million people voted by mail in 2020, and more than 35 million did so in 2022, according to an Election Assistance Commission study.

In an emailed statement, a USPS spokesperson said “we are currently delivering mail in 2.7 days, although we continue to recommend as a common-sense measure that voters should mail their completed ballot before Election Day, and at least one week prior to their state’s deadline."

“As we have discussed widely with election officials, the Postal Service is in the midst of network modernization,” the spokesperson said. “Election Mail routinely outperforms our regular service performance due to our long-standing processes and procedures.”

In July, the USPS inspector general found in a report that the agency did not always comply with USPS procedures in dealing with election mail. 

At a news conference Aug. 29, Steven Monteith, the USPS chief customer and marketing officer, said the Postal Service was employing “extraordinary measures throughout the organization as we move closer to the election, and that will make sure that we’re fully focused on the effort.”

Despite “pockets of service issues,” the agency’s increased efforts around election mail “makes us very confident that we’re going to have a great election season,” Monteith said.

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The letter Wednesday says election officials had repeatedly raised concerns with the USPS but had not seen adequate improvement.

“Over the course of the last year, election officials across the country have raised serious questions about processing facility operations, lost or delayed election mail, and front-line training deficiencies impacting USPS’s ability to deliver election mail in a timely and accurate manner,” it says.

“Despite repeated engagement with USPS Election and Political Mail headquarters staff and state/regional Managers of Customer Relations, we have not seen improvement or concerted efforts to remediate our concerns,” the letter says.

The letter echoes a scuffle at the National Association of State Election Directors conference in Minnesota in July, when officials from multiple states expressed strong concerns directly with Postal Service officials during a talk.

“In the current climate, elections are being determined by these delays,” Kansas Election Director Bryan Caskey told a USPS official. “You have to be better. We have to better. I just want to make sure you are hearing why we are so upset.”

The election officials’ letter cites three specific concerns. It warns that USPS staff members are often inconsistently trained, that long mail delivery times risk some ballots' arriving too late to be counted and that there has been an increase in ballots returned as undeliverable.