Ballots in swing states slow to arrive

Absentee ballots are taking longer to reach election offices in key swing states than in the rest of the country, new data shows, as the U.S. Postal Service rushes to deliver votes ahead of strict state deadlines.

Over the past five days, the on-time rate for ballots in 17 postal districts representing 10 battleground states and 151 electoral votes was 89.1% — 5.9 percentage points lower than the national average. By that measure, more than 1 in 10 ballots are arriving outside the Postal Service’s one- to three-day delivery window for firstclass mail.

Those delays loom large over the election: 28 states will not accept ballots that arrive after Election Day, even if they are postmarked before. Continued snags in the mail system could invalidate tens of thousands of ballots across the country, and could factor into whether President Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Joe Biden captures crucial battleground states and, ultimately, the White House.

In Michigan, for example, the Detroit postal district — which includes some of the state’s largest concentrations of Black voters, who are crucial to Biden’s campaign — delivered only 72.8% of ballots on-time over the past five days, according to Postal Service data filed in the District Court of the District of Columbia. In the Greater Michigan district, which represents the rest of the state, 84.3% of ballots arrived to election officials on time.

In the Greensboro and Mid-Carolinas districts of North Carolina, 84.7% and 85.1% of ballots were delivered on time, respectively, in the past five days.

In all, 12 of the 17 mailing districts saw on-time ballot delivery rates below 95%, and seven came in under 90%.

Voting rights advocates say that even the five districts with on-time scores between 90 and 95% — the Gulf Atlantic district in north Florida and most of Georgia; Northern Ohio; Northland, which includes most of Minnesota; Philadelphia Metro; and South Florida — are underperforming. The Postal Service’s data accounts only for mail pieces the agency successfully identified as ballots, and does not include “first mile” and “last mile” handling steps, which add time to delivery. Advocates and postal experts say the agency, under normal circumstances, should have an ontime score of 97% for ballots.

Even as ballot on-time rates outpace those for all other first- class mail, the Postal Service continues to struggle with timely delivery. The issue is less about volume — ballots represent a slim portion of all firstclass mail items being handled — than it is about the agency’s underlying operational challenges, such as chronic staffing shortages, decreased processing capacity and communication bottlenecks.