As more jurisdictions expand mail-in voting options, the United States Postal Service issued a warning this week that states are being unreasonable in the lax deadlines they are setting for mail-in ballots to be sent out and returned. Congress should take this opportunity to set new federal standards for mail-in voting that will return stability and credibility to our electoral system.
In the agency’s 2024 Post-Election Analysis Report released on Tuesday, the Postal Service reported it processed more than 99.2 million ballots during this year’s general election. The average delivery time for ballots was just one day, 98% of ballots were delivered within three days, and 99% were delivered within a week, according to the report.
As impressive as these numbers are, the Postal Service went on to report that 150,630 ballots “entered into the mailstream between Oct. 31 and Nov. 5” and that “it is unrealistic to expect” these ballots were received, completed, and returned by voters to the proper election officials on time.
“When it comes to the delivery of Election Mail, there are 50 states and nearly 8,000 election jurisdictions that are far from uniform in their election laws and practices, and that often do not consider how the mail system works,” USPS wrote in a statement on Tuesday. “This can result in a mismatch of timeframes, deadlines, ballot return suggestions and the practical reality of using the mail. Many of these laws and practices were not established with the Postal Service’s operations in mind.”
The Postal Service called on policymakers to consider “the Postal Service’s practices when evaluating whether to rely solely on postmarks to determine timeliness of Ballot Mail” and “the Postal Service’s established delivery timeframes when setting ballot request deadlines.”
In other words, too many states are setting unrealistic deadlines for the Postal Service to meet when formulating their mail-in voting systems.
Considering some jurisdictions were still counting mail-in ballots weeks after the election and that California is still counting ballots a month after the election, Congress must step in and bring order to the mail-in ballot process. It can do so by creating one national standard for federal elections. This is well within congressional authority, as demonstrated by the establishment of a national Election Day in 1871.
Congress should then go a step further and mandate that all jurisdictions begin counting their mail-in ballots before Election Day and set a firm Election Day deadline for all mail-in ballots to reach the proper vote-counting officials. With these reforms in place, Florida is now able to deliver accurate election totals on election night within hours of the polls closing. There is no reason other states should not be able to match the basic level of governmental competence.
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If some state and local jurisdictions want to keep their current crazy mail-in voting systems for state and local elections, they should be free to do so. If Oakland, California, wants to take a month to find out who its mayor is, that’s fine. But for federal elections with national implications, voters across the country deserve to know what the balance of power will be in the House and Senate on election night.
By working with the Postal Service to identify reasonable deadlines for sending out and receiving ballots, Congress can restore some much-needed integrity to our electoral process.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
