Column: Will the Postal Service be up to the task of delivering ballots on time? Election officials are worried

Postal Service keeps promising that things are getting better — more efficient operations, more reliable mail delivery, improved finances, a more climate-friendly truck fleet and so on. Among the service’s critics are state election officials coast to coast, who expressed concerns earlier this month about its “ability to deliver election mail in a timely and accurate manner.” Despite numerous meetings with USPS headquarters and regional staff, “we have not seen improvement or concerted efforts to remediate our concerns.” The officials made their point in a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, which points to another question that many people have about the USPS: Why is DeJoy still in his job? Notwithstanding the service’s claims to have created and implemented special protocols for handling election-related mail, the state officials say that over the last year they have seen voter mail “being marked undeliverable at higher than usual rates, even in cases where a voter is known not to have moved.” Ballots have been delivered as much as 10 days after they’re postmarked, which means they may not be counted. The service’s most recent operational statistics, released Feb. 5, showed that 82.7% of first-class mail was delivered on time as defined by its “service standard,” which is to deliver all first-class letters within the continental U.S. within five days; moving the goalposts, the USPS had raised that standard from three days in 2022 because it deemed the former standard “unattainable.” The new standard hasn’t fared much better. But he added that “as a common-sense measure,” voters should mail their ballots at least one week prior to their state’s deadline — a subtle signal that the USPS might run into snags getting mail across town from voters to their local ballot-counting location within its “attainable” five-day deadline.