In an Intense Election Year, New Post Office Rules Could Trip Up Voter Registration
The U.S. Postal Service began piloting a cost-cutting plan in 2023 to remove the machines that sort and postmark mail from local offices and instead consolidate mail processing in regional centers. As they rolled out the program nationwide, Jeremy Schilling, president of a local chapter of the American Postal Workers Union in Oregon, was one of those who spoke out about the adverse effects. His union organized demonstrations against the consolidation plan and blew the whistle on election mail that fell through the cracks due to the slowdown amid the 2024 presidential race.
Election mail that people leave at their local post office in Southern Oregon, where Schilling is based, typically sits overnight until it is collected in the morning since evening dispatches were slashed nationwide at the end of last year. The mail is then trucked nearly 300 miles to a Portland facility that processes mail for most of the state, where it is postmarked, then sent back to the local post office for delivery.
“Any mail that’s getting dropped into a blue box is not getting postmarked on the same day, and likely not on the day after either,” Schilling said. “The mail is so slow that it is an unreasonable amount of lead time that the normal person wouldn’t expect.”
Late last year, USPS announced that this practice was now official policy: It would no longer postmark mail automatically on the date it is received.
https://boltsmag.org/usps-postmark-rules-change-voter-registration-deadline-election-year/
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