Inside the Postal Service Sprint to Deliver Millions of Ballots by Tuesday

From longer hours and extra staffing to special lines in its branches, the US Postal Service is taking an array of special actions to make sure mail-in ballots for the midterm elections are counted on Tuesday, Reuters reported Monday. Some branches may extend hours and establish a 'Ballot Postmark Only' line at retail counters or a drive-through Ballot Mail option, alongside expedited handling, extra deliveries and special pickups. There are daily - and sometimes multiple - sweeps of all postal facilities in the final days to search for any remaining ballots, and on Sunday the Postal Service brought on extra staff to collect, postmark and process mail to expedite ballot deliveries.

The scale is in the agency's own numbers. In the last two months, USPS has delivered tens of millions of ballots and a record 4.2 billion pieces of political marketing mail - the flyers that prod voters to support or oppose a candidate or ballot measure - up more than 300 million pieces over the 2024 election cycle. In 2024, the agency delivered 99.2 million ballots to and from voters in the presidential election, when about 30 percent of votes were cast by mail. Amber McReynolds, chair of the Postal Service Board of Governors, told Reuters that voting by mail seemed to be a little higher than in prior midterm elections, in part because ballots went out earlier in some states, and she noted the agency has been delivering ballots since the Civil War at the direction of President Abraham Lincoln. 'We've done it in a cross-partisan, non-partisan, apolitical way. We'll continue to operate that way,' McReynolds said, describing workers as 'delivering democracy.'

The sprint runs under political pressure. President Donald Trump ordered the agency to write rules that would bar it from delivering ballots if states did not agree to turn over lists of eligible voters, and some voters expressed concern about voting by mail; the Supreme Court blocked Trump and USPS from enforcing those rules in September. On Election Day itself, workers will make extra trips to postal facilities to collect the last ballots, or the Postal Service may drive directly to get ballots in hand - against a blizzard of state rules, ballot designs and deadlines, since some states count ballots postmarked by November 3 while others, like Colorado, require them in an election official's possession by 7 p.m. Mountain Time on Tuesday, except for military and overseas ballots. The agency has also launched a special portal, electionmail.org, so local officials can get real-time help with mail-related ballot issues. 'We take the trust we've earned with them very seriously,' McReynolds said.