Slow mail reported in swing states
Absentee ballots are taking longer to reach election offices in key swing states than in the rest of the country, new data show, as the U.S. Postal Service rushes to deliver votes ahead of strict state deadlines.
Over the past five days, the ontime rate for ballots in 17 postal districts representing 10 battleground states and 151 electoral votes was 89.1 percent — 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 first-class 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 percent 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 percent of ballots arrived to election officials on time.
In the Greensboro and MidCarolinas districts of North Carolina, 84.7 percent and 85.1 percent 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 percent, and seven came in under 90 percent.
Even as ballot on-time rates outpace those for all other firstclass mail, the Postal Service continues to struggle with timely delivery. The issue is less about volume — ballots represent a slim portion of all first-class 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.
“This is a disgrace,” said S. David Fineman, a former chair of the Postal Service’s governing board. “Here’s the bottom line: they knew that they had an obligation to deliver election mail on time. They’ve been told that both publicly in congressional hearings, and four federal judges have told them that. One can’t understand how they could not have these facilities fully staffed so that election mail could be delivered on time. It’s beyond my belief that there’s a reason that something like this could happen.”
The Postal Service reported Thursday that it had processed 4.5 billion pieces of political mail, such as campaign advertisements, and official election mail, including voter registration information, ballot applications and 122 million ballots.
More than 52 million Americans have voted using absentee ballots, according to the U.S. Elections Project, and more than 37 million mail ballots remain outstanding.
“While our ongoing commitment is to maintain the highest level of service performance for all mail, we acknowledge that our full focus and prioritization on election ballots is having a near-term impact on the overall on-time performance of other products throughout the network,” Postal Service chief retail and delivery officer Kristin Seaver said in a statement. “… In the final push through the election, our entire team remains laser focused on advancing ballots to local boards and election officials as quickly as possible.”