U.S. Postal Service leaders said Thursday that this year’s election mail will be business as usual, promising the same delivery as in the past, unaffected by President Trump’s professed distrust of voting by mail.
They said they expect to deliver tens of millions of ballots to and from voters just as they did in 2022 and 2024 under President Biden.
That includes a late-season surge of attention to ballots, making sure they get back to election officials as fast as possible so they don’t miss deadlines for counting ballots sent by post.
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“We are all systems go for next month’s midterm general election,” Postmaster General David Steiner told reporters in a briefing called to reassure the public after months of upheaval.
Mr. Trump tried to rope the post office into policing mailed ballots, citing concerns of noncitizens being able to vote. After an intense legal battle, the Supreme Court put a hold on Mr. Trump’s plans, forbidding them in elections this year.
Steven W. Monteith, the USPS’s chief customer and marketing officer, said the service is following the court orders and will deliver every ballot put into the mail this year.
“We always deliver all the ballots we receive to the best of our ability,” he said. “We are fully committed to that delivery.”
Officials said voters can help by knowing their local deadlines, requesting mail ballots early and sending them back well before the deadlines.
The growth of voting by mail has proved to be a major break from past voting practices.
At a polling place, the ballot is handed from election officials to a voter, then back again, in a matter of minutes.
With the mail, live ballots leave election officials’ hands and go through a third party before hopefully reaching the voter. The ballots are then sometimes sent back through the same channels. The amount of time a ballot is outside of election officials’ hands creates new risks for mischief.
Mr. Trump, despite voting by mail himself, has complained about the process — particularly in all-mail states, where a ballot is sent to the address associated with every registered voter.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, meanwhile, has opined, “It has long been established that mail-in ballots are prone to fraud.”
The risks were underscored by Brendan Donahue, deputy chief inspector of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, who offered tips for how to avoid pitfalls.
He suggested voters make sure they check their mailboxes every day to prevent mail from sitting around and becoming a target for theft.
He said the safest way to return a ballot is to drop it at an official ballot collection point or hand it over at the post office. That means it can be postmarked on the spot, helping meet local election rules governing deadlines for casting ballots.
Postal officials said election mail is marked differently so it can be identified and sped along the route.
They said in past elections they have delivered 99.9% of ballots from voter to election officials within seven days, and 98.9% within three days. The average in 2024 was less than two days for ballots going to voters and for the ones going back to election officials.
Roughly 30 states let mailed ballots be counted even if they arrive after Election Day, including Washington state, which allows ballots to be tallied up to 21 days afterward.
Eight states let ballots arrive without postmarks.
The Supreme Court, in a decision in June, said neither the Constitution nor federal law speaks to those issues, so states are free to adopt the rules they want.
The sight of ballots drifting in and being counted days after voting has supposedly ended has spurred complaints, particularly from Republicans, who say it all seems fishy.
Democrats, whose voters are likelier to use mail, defend the practice and say there is no evidence of widespread malfeasance.
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