Pony Express would be ashamed this time
John Hamilton of Santa Fe doesn’t have a typical complaint about the mail being late. He has a mystery story.
Eleven letters addressed to Hamilton arrived in his mailbox Wednesday. All of them were mailed with proper postage — in 2018 or 2019.
Two of the letters were almost 2 years old. Two other envelopes contained credit cards and instructions to activate them. Sensing trouble, the bank that issued the cards canceled them months before their long-delayed delivery to Hamilton.
Yet another envelope contained Hamilton’s 1099 tax form for 2019. He assumed it had been lost forever in the mail. Hamilton obtained a copy of the form so he could file his taxes on time.
“It doesn’t exactly instill confidence in the U.S. Postal Service,” Hamilton said.
He phoned the agency to ask about the delayed delivery and, he hoped, to learn where his mail had been.
No one answered. Communication in the coronavirus pandemic can be a roll of the dice.
But I reached Rod Spurgeon, a regional spokesman for the Postal Service. He said Hamilton’s mail could have been accidentally left in a tray that postal workers did not use for a long while.
Equipment in postal stations sometimes sits idle, Spurgeon said. Letters lying flat in a tray could have gone unnoticed for who knows how long.
Hamilton, 71, discounts this notion for many reasons, starting with the obvious. Most of the letters originated in different cities at different times, often months apart.
“They shouldn’t have been stuck in one buried tray at a postal station,” Hamilton said.
Two of the 11 delayed letters were postmarked the same day, Nov. 9, 2018. That was their only similarity.
One contained a receipt for a bill Hamilton had paid. It was postmarked in Carol Stream, Ill. The other, a solicitation from a church in Santa Fe, was postmarked in Albuquerque.
It is unknown how these two letters intersected on their way to Hamilton’s home. What’s clear is it took 23 months for them to be delivered, a span that would have embarrassed the Pony Express.
Hamilton will never know where his mail was all those months. He sees its belated arrival as cause for a larger concern and a more important question.
Can the Postal Service deliver ballots on time during this mean presidential campaign?
“The election was absolutely my first thought,” Hamilton said.
The race between Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden has the country on edge. Never have I heard so many people calling an election the most important of their lifetime.
Part of that assessment is because America for most of this year has been reeling from the pandemic and Trump’s mishandling of it.
One day, Trump was hailing himself as a wartime president fighting an invisible enemy. Soon after, he was a soothsayer claiming the virus would soon be vanquished and churches could be packed by Easter. He meant Easter of this year, which was April 12.
The lack of a coherent national strategy became more apparent when Trump himself was infected with COVID-19. Members of his inner circle also have contracted the disease.
To lower expectations of his chance for reelection, Trump spreads falsehoods about voter fraud and the security of mail-in ballots.
Hamilton’s concern about the mail is different. He worries about the Postal Service’s speed under election deadlines.
New Mexico’s system allows voters to return absentee ballots to their county clerk by mail or in person. For a ballot to count, it must arrive at your county clerk’s office by 7 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3.
Spurgeon, of the Postal Service, says his agency handles ballots in an efficient and uniform way. Regardless of the state, ballots are segregated from other mail before being processed, postmarked and distributed.
Drawing on his recent experience, Hamilton wonders if all the ballots will reach their destination on schedule. He isn’t taking the chance.
“I’m going to vote in person,” he said.
It’s a capital idea. With a box full of old mail finally arriving, Hamilton has no interest in going postal during the heat of a campaign.