Amid Concerns, Postmaster General Says USPS Is Ready for Election Season

Amid questions over timely mail-in ballot delivery, U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has assured state and local election officials that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is prepared for the November general election.
Those concerns included properly addressed election mail being returned—which could automatically cause voters to be designated as inactive and create chaos when they show up at the polls—and mail-in ballots being postmarked on time but arriving days after the deadline to be counted.
“The most common reason that a mailpiece is returned to sender is poor address quality, but we are working to ensure that whatever the cause, we resolve the issue quickly,” DeJoy wrote in the Sept. 13 letter, which was shared publicly on Sept. 16.
“Let us reiterate, modernization and enhancement plans will not have an impact on Election Mail, and we have committed to limit network changes to avoid any unintended disruption in service for the upcoming election and peak season,” DeJoy wrote.
The USPS also has teams in place to handle election mail flagged as “undeliverable as addressed” and to make sure the mail pieces are not returned to election officials, DeJoy wrote.
“You can rest assured that along with the entire United States Postal Service, I am personally fully committed to effective implementation of our longstanding processes and procedures designed to ensure that all ballot mail is delivered in a timely and secure manner,” he told the two associations.
North Carolina would have been the first state to send out mail-in ballots, but a judge has halted the release after a challenge from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate who suspended his campaign to endorse former President Donald Trump and has since been fighting to remove his name from ballots in heavily contested states.