Anticipating an avalanche of absentee ballots, the Postal Service recently sent detailed letters to 46 states and the District of Columbia warning that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted — adding another layer of uncertainty ahead of the high-stakes presidential contest.
The letters sketch a grim possibility for the tens of millions of Americans eligible for a mail-in ballot this fall: Even if people follow all of their state’s election rules, the pace of Postal Service delivery may disqualify their votes.
The Postal Service’s warnings of potential disenfranchisement came as the agency undergoes a sweeping organizational and policy overhaul amid dire financial conditions. Cost-cutting moves have already delayed mail delivery by as much as a week in some places, and a new decision to decommission 10 percent of the Postal Service’s sorting machines sparked widespread concern the slowdowns will only worsen. Rank-and-file postal workers say the move is ill-timed and could sharply diminish the speedy processing of flat mail, including letters and ballots.
The ballot warnings, issued at the end of July from Thomas J. Marshall, general counsel and executive vice president of the Postal Service, and obtained through a records request by The Washington Post, were planned before the appointment of Louis DeJoy, a former logistics executive and ally of President Trump, as postmaster general in early summer. They go beyond the traditional coordination between the Postal Service and election officials, drafted as fears surrounding the coronavirus pandemic triggered an unprecedented and sudden shift to mail-in voting.
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Some states anticipate 10 times the normal volume of election mail. Six states and D.C. received warnings that ballots could be delayed for a narrow set of voters. But the Postal Service gave 40 others — including the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida — more-serious warnings that their longstanding deadlines for requesting, returning, or counting ballots were ‘‘incongruous’’ with mail service and that voters who send ballots in close to those deadlines may become disenfranchised.
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‘‘The Postal Service is asking election officials and voters to realistically consider how the mail works,’’ Martha Johnson, a spokeswoman for the USPS, said in a statement.
In response to the Postal Service’s warnings, a few states have quickly moved deadlines — forcing voters to request or cast ballots earlier, or deciding to delay tabulating results while waiting for more ballots to arrive.
Pennsylvania election officials cited its letter late Thursday in asking the state’s Supreme Court for permission to count ballots delivered three days after Election Day. But deadlines in many other states have not been or cannot be adjusted with just weeks remaining before the first absentee ballots hit the mail stream. More than 60 lawsuits in at least two dozen states over the mechanics of mail-in voting are wending their way through the courts.
Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that mail ballots lead to widespread voter fraud and in the process politicized the USPS. This week, he said he opposes emergency funding for the agency — which has repeatedly requested more resources — because of Democratic efforts to expand mail voting.
The Postal Service’s structural upheaval alone has led experts and lawmakers from both parties to worry about timely delivery of prescription medications and Social Security checks, as well as ballots.
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‘‘The slowdown is another tool in the toolbox of voter suppression,’’ said Celina Stewart, senior director of advocacy and litigation with the nonpartisan League of Women Voters. ‘‘That’s no secret. We do think this is a voter-suppression tactic.’’
Vanita Gupta, a Justice Department official in the Obama administration and now president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said she viewed the situation as ‘‘the weaponization of the US Postal Service for the president’s electoral purposes.’’
Former President Barack Obama said Trump is trying to “actively kneecap the Postal Service” in order to hurt vote-by-mail in November.
In an interview with his former adviser, David Plouffe, the former president pointed to Trump’s recent remarks linking his opposition to emergency USPS funding to his fears about mail-in ballots.
“What we’ve never seen before is a president say, ‘I’m going to try to actively kneecap the Postal Service to encourage voting, and I will be explicit about the reason I’m doing it.’ That’s sort of unheard of, right?” Obama told Plouffe on Cadence13’s “Campaign HQ” podcast.
On Thursday, a major union representing postal workers endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president. The National Association of Letter Carriers, which represents 300,000 current and retired workers, said that Trump has long been hostile to the Post Office. His administration has called for an end to collective bargaining rights, proposed service cuts and has eyed the possibility of privatizing the functions of the agency.
DeJoy, in service changes last month, has drastically reduced overtime and banned extra trips to ensure on-time mail delivery. His reorganizations ousted several agency veterans in key operational roles. And the USPS is currently decommissioning 10 percent of its costly mail-sorting machines, which workers say could hinder processing of election mail, according to a grievance filed by the American Postal Workers Union and obtained by The Washington Post. Those 671 machines, concentrated in high-population areas, have capacity to sort 21.4 million pieces of paper mail per hour.
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The machine reductions, together with existing mail delays and a surge of packages — a boon to the Postal Service’s finances but a headache for an organization designed to handle paper rather than boxes — also risk hamstringing the agency as the election approaches and have led lawmakers to hike up pressure on DeJoy to rescind his directives.
DeJoy wrote in a letter to USPS workers Thursday that temporary delivery slowdowns were ‘‘unintended consequences’’ of his efficiency moves but that the ‘‘discipline’’ he was bringing to the agency ‘‘will increase our performance for the election and upcoming peak season and maintain the high level of public trust we have earned for dedication and commitment to our customers throughout our history.’’
The letters to states detailing concerns for November followed ramped-up vote-by-mail primaries marred by serious delivery problems. It ‘‘presented a need to ensure the Postal Service’s recommendations were reemphasized to elections officials,’’ Johnson said.
In New York City, for example, a 17-fold increase in mail-in ballots left results of a June congressional primary race in doubt for six weeks. During court wrangling over it, USPS workers said elections officials had dropped off 34,000 blank absentee ballots at a Brooklyn processing center on the day before the election, leaving postal workers scrambling in an attempt to deliver them overnight. Some voters received ballots after the election, and tens of thousands of voted ballots were initially thrown out because of delayed receipt.
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The letters warning about November caution many states that their deadlines for voters to request an absentee ballot are too close to Election Day and that ‘‘the Postal Service cannot adjust its delivery standards to accommodate the requirements of state election law.’’ The letters put the onus on election officials to adjust deadlines or educate voters to act well before them.
Mail carriers, meanwhile, have warned that new cost-cutting measures at the USPS are slowing the delivery of mail ballots in key states. Recent contests have offered a preview of potential consequences, with voters — particularly in urban areas such as Detroit and the Bronx — complaining that their absentee ballots did not arrive until the last minute or at all.
The problems predate the cost-cutting measures — a late returned ballot was the chief reason absentee or mail ballots were disqualified during the 2016 election, according to US Election Assistance Commission data submitted to Congress.
But the onslaught of vote-by-mail ballots, driven by directives to stay at home and practice social distancing during the pandemic, has increased the volume of delays this year. In D.C.’s early-June primary, elections officials drove around town hand-delivering ballots because the mail service was not quick enough. In Florida, 18,500 mailed ballots arrived too late to be counted during the March primary. Tens of thousands of late ballots in Pennsylvania were counted only after courts intervened.
Eighteen states and D.C. have eased or expanded access to mail ballots during the pandemic, allowing concerned voters to avoid potential exposure to the virus at polling places. These policy shifts have brought the number of Americans who are eligible to cast mail or absentee ballots in the general election to a historic high of nearly 180 million, roughly 97 million of whom will automatically receive an absentee ballot or an absentee ballot request form in the mail, according to a tally by The Washington Post.
An analysis of the USPS letters to states reveals that the threat of ballot rejection because of missed delivery deadlines may be highest for voters in 40 states that received serious warnings. About 159.5 million registered voters live in those states.
The USPS did not offer serious warnings to the five states that have long conducted universal vote-by-mail elections — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced Friday that the state will conduct its general election mostly by mail because of the coronavirus pandemic, sending ballots to active registered voters while providing the option to vote in person.
Material from the Associated Press and Bloomberg News was used in this report.