We're less than three months away from election day and it appears some USPS facilities aren't following proper procedures for election mail.
The U.S. Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) confirmed in a new audit released last month that many USPS facilities are lacking efficiency and accountability. That's not something people hope to hear during an election year.
Last November, the OIG started on a self-initiated audit of “Election Mail Readiness for the 2024 General Election." According to the report, 15 mail processing facilities and 35 delivery units across 13 states and Puerto Rico were selected to be evaluated during primary elections this year in the months of February and March. There were some major areas of concern identified from the audit.
Hans von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and Manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative, said too many facilities are experiencing delays and poor handling of election-related mail.
"Unless you absolutely have to use a mail-in or absentee ballot because you're disabled or out of the country, you are foolish to do so," he said.
This is not new news to Spakovsky though. The report from the OIG is also just the latest report they've sent out about USPS facilities and their election mail procedures. Spakovsky said a 2019 report from the Inspector General showed that election mail delivery was slow in some cases.
"Things have not gotten better," Spakovsky said. "In their best facilities, absentee ballots were delivered on time only 96% of the time."
That 2019 report said the worst places seemed to be in California, Illinois and New Jersey where election mail was delivered on time 84% of the time. That means 16% of the ballots were thrown out by election officials.
A standard rule inside the postal service too is that election-related mail, which is identified differently from other mail, is separated and given special handling from other pieces of mail. The new report from the OIG says that is not happening all of the time.
"It's happening with some absentee ballots but a lot of them are not being separated out the way they should and that means there are going to be delays in them being delivered," said Spakovsky.