Elections Officials Beg Louis DeJoy To DeBug DeMail Before DeElection

DeJoy does not bring joy.

Video screenshot, KABC-TV. Fire was Christmas Eve 2019; presumably no ballots burned to cinders, just children’s Christmas dreams.

Just when you might have thought you don’t have to know the full name of the US Postmaster General (that would be Louis DeJoy, and don’t even ask us how he’s still in the job!), two national groups representing America’s state and local elections officials sent him a letter identifying some serious problems with mail delivery that could potentially “disenfranchise voters” and saying HEY FIX THIS.

For the sake of timing, the Associated Press notes that the letter went out yesterday to coincide with the first general election ballots in the US, sent to absentee voters in Alabama.

Here’s the AP’s summary of the potential problem areas:

In an alarming letter, the officials said that over the past year, including the just-concluded primary season, mailed ballots that were postmarked on time were received by local election offices days after the deadline to be counted. They also noted that properly addressed election mail was being returned to them as undeliverable, a problem that could automatically send voters to inactive status through no fault of their own, potentially creating chaos when those voters show up to cast a ballot.

The letter also notes that the election officials’ attempts to work with the Postal Service have been unsuccessful, and that there were so many issues nationwide that the fuckups are “not one-off mistakes or a problem with specific facilities. Instead, it demonstrates a pervasive lack of understanding and enforcement of USPS policies among its employees.”

Customer service and democracy, boy, I don’t know.

The letter was sent jointly by the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors, which represent state and local elections offices in all 50 states, DC, and our quaint colonial holdovers who should riot to demand statehood. It noted that despite “repeated engagement with USPS Election and Political Mail headquarters staff” and regional postal managers, elections offices hadn’t seen any “improvement or concerted efforts” to fix problems the groups had called attention to, so what the hell, man?

The letter cited spotty training of Postal Service staff — not only local letter carriers but all the way up to Customer Relations management, which meant that voters and local elections offices had been given faulty information about USPS policies on election mail. With 600,000 employees, that’s a lot of people who may or may not know how election mail should be handled.

Worse, despite Postal Service assurances that the agency has ironed out much of the widespread WhatTheFuckistry seen well in advance of the 2020 vote, the letter notes that “local election officials are receiving timely postmarked ballots well after Election Day and well outside the three to five business days” that USPS says is the standard for first-class mail. Several states reported receiving “anywhere from dozens to hundreds of ballots 10 or more days after postmark,” crashing up against the limits at which states count ballots postmarked on or before Election Day. That usually ranges from one to 10 days after the election; only Alaska and Utah allow up to 14 days after.

On top of that, elections officials have seen “higher than usual rates” of election mail being returned as undeliverable — not just ballots, but applications, election notices and the like — “even in cases where a voter is known not to have moved.” That’s worrisome because election mail that’s returned as undeliverable can trigger the process by which people are removed from voter rolls, leading to people being unable to vote even though they were unaware of any problems.

Postal Service spokespeople this week were all smiles and assurances that the agency is ready to handle election mail on time, although as the AP notes, a modernization program “has caused some delivery hiccups.” USPS says its current first-class delivery time averages 2.7 days as long as your postal carrier isn’t named “Newman,” but it also urges people not to put off getting ballots in on time.

“We are ready to deliver. We were successful in 2020 delivering a historic volume of mail in ballots; also in 2022 and will do so again in November 2024,” Adrienne Marshall, director of Election Mail and Government Services, said in a statement. […]

Postal Service officials told reporters last month that almost 98% of ballots were returned to election officials within three days in 2020, and in 2022, the figure was nearly 99%. DeJoy said he would like to inch closer to 100% this election cycle and that the Postal Service is better positioned to handle ballots than four years ago.

Also too, we noticed that, just to be sure DeJoy and a long CC list of federal and congressional officials received the letter, a rather pointed notation at the end adds “LETTER SENT VIA EMAIL AND U.S. MAIL.”

Seems only prudent.

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Should We Freak Out Yet? Your Postal Service Fuckery Roundup ​​​​​

You Had To Know The Full Name Of The Postmaster General In 2020. It's Alllmost Time To Ax Louis DeJoy!

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[AP / Letter to Dejoy via National Association of Secretaries of State]

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