(NewsNation) — The head of the U.S. Postal Service insists the agency is prepared for the 2024 election and said it will undertake “heroic efforts” to deliver mail-in ballots on time even as election officials raise concerns.
“Let me be clear, the postal service is ready to deliver the nation’s mail-in ballots,” Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told reporters during a virtual news conference last week.
DeJoy said USPS will implement “extraordinary measures” to ensure the mail-in voting process runs smoothly. He said there will be extra deliveries and collections in the lead-up to the election, special pickups and expanded hours for processing facilities, among other efforts.
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USPS will also take measures to “rescue” ballots at risk of missing state deadlines because they were mailed late, DeJoy said. However, he urged those voting by mail to return their ballot at least one week before Election Day.
“We encourage the voting public to mail early if they choose to vote by mail,” he said.
The postmaster general’s assurances come after a group of state and local election officials issued a letter to DeJoy earlier this month warning that the postal service had not fixed ongoing problems that could disenfranchise voters.
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“We have not seen improvement or concerted efforts to remediate our concerns,” the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) wrote in the Sept. 11 letter.
When asked about the letter during last week’s press conference, DeJoy said it’s difficult to address “generalties” about perceived issues but vowed to fix specific problems as they arise. He pointed out that during the 2020 election, the postal service delivered 99.89% of ballots to election officials within seven days.
“We will be even better prepared for 2024 and will perform admirably again as we always have,” he said.
Election officials raise concerns
Election officials have been raising concerns for weeks about the postal service’s ability to handle the flood of mail-in ballots.
Specifically, officials highlighted three main problems in their recent letter:
Inconsistent training for USPS staff
Exceptionally long delivery times
An increase in election-related mail being marked as undeliverable
The letter said local election officials in nearly every state are receiving timely postmarked ballots “well after” Election Day.
Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, the past NASS president, recently said about 1,000 mail ballots from the state’s Aug. 6 primary election couldn’t be counted because they arrived too late or were not postmarked.
Election officials are also worried that mail is being marked as undeliverable at “higher than usual rates,” even when a voter hasn’t moved.
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“We implore you to take immediate and tangible corrective action to address the ongoing performance
issues with USPS election mail service,” the letter read. “Failure to do so will risk limiting voter participation and trust in the election process.”
DeJoy told reporters he talked with the election officials and agreed to stay in closer contact to address problems as they come up. He noted that election laws, and ballot deadlines, vary from state to state.
“To operate successfully and even legally, we must have consistent policies nationwide,” DeJoy said. “But there are 8,000 election jurisdictions and 50 states who are far from uniform in their election laws and practices.”
In a recent audit, the USPS Inspector General’s office found high on-time processing scores of more than 97% during the primary season from Dec. 31, 2023, to Apr. 30, 2024. However, the report also found that Postal Service workers did not always comply with rules and procedures for handling election mail.
DeJoy assured reporters that postal workers are up to the task.
“All 640,000 people are looking at ballots, if they see a stray one, they dive on it and get it into the system,” he said.
Four years ago, the 2020 election saw a surge in mail-in ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic. Election officials reported sending just over 69 million ballots in the mail, a substantial increase from four years earlier, the Associated Press reported.
According to the Census Bureau, 69% of voters cast their ballots “nontraditionally” in 2020, meaning either by mail or before Election Day. That’s more than double the share that voted nontraditionally in 2012 and triple the level in 2004.
