Several states have received communications from the USPS General Counsel, which outlines standard postal delivery times and prices and prices leading up to the November election and warns state secretaries that election laws enacted by states would not necessarily guarantee post-in ballots in time will be received counted.
“Certain postal ballot deadlines, especially for new residents registering to vote shortly before Election Day, appear to be in line with the Postal Service’s delivery standards,” USPS General Counsel Thomas Marshall wrote to California Secretary of State Alex Padilla. “This mismatch creates a significant risk that some votes will not be returned by mail to count under your laws because we understand them.”
The timing of letter detail breaks
The letters list standard delivery times and prices for mail for first class and marketing mail, the two types of mail that USPS sends. Many states use the non-profit marketing mail frequency to send election mail, including absent and mail-in polls and voting applications to voters.
The letters state that election mail should be sent from voters via first class mail, which is more expensive than the non-profit marketing rate.
“State and local election officials can generally use First-Class Mail as Marketing Mail to send low votes to voters,” the letters state.
First-class mail takes between two and five days to receive, while marketing mail takes between three and 10 days to receive, according to USPS. That, according to the Secretary of State of Pennsylvania, is a longer delivery time than what was planned for the primaries in June, according to a statement in a related lawsuit.
The slower delivery is, according to the court submission, a likely outcome of recent changes put in place by the post office that have been criticized for the risk of being able to vote by mail in the country. As a result, Pennsylvania said it was ready to extend its deadline to receive ballots up to three days after the election, provided they are mailed by election day.
The USPS said the letters were intended to “advise election officials to think about the potential inconsistencies between the Postal Service’s delivery standards, which have been in place for several years and have not changed, and the provisions of state law,” in a statement.
“During each election cycle, the Postal Service regularly conducts outreach with state and local election officials regarding our mailing requirements, delivery standards and best practices for enabling voting by mail,” a USPS spokesman said in a statement. “The Postal Service is well prepared and has sufficient capacity to deliver America’s election mail. The increases in volume and the effect of when volumes were sent in the primary election presented a need to ensure that the recommendations of the. “Postal services were again called to election officials.”
Secretary of State is already implementing changes
Both the Michigan and Ohio State Secretaries said the letters reflect the changes the states have already implemented to ensure that postal and absent votes were mailed and received on time to count in the elections.
Secretary of State Jon Keeling, spokesman for Ohio, said the letter “reinforces reforms we’ve been working on since the primaries,” which include the design of the post-in-votes so that they exclude, among other things, the mail pieces.
Michigan Secretary of State spokeswoman Tracy Wimmer said the letter “reiterates the importance of a number of things we are already doing,” such as “working with USPS officials in Michigan to ensure election broadcasts are in their system. be prioritized. “
Washington State Secretary Kim Wyman was the first secretary to announce that she had received the USPS letter.
Wyman was initially concerned when she received the letter, because Washington has historically sent e-mail votes to every registered voter by first-class mail to a non-profit price post. She was worried about the letter stating that if they sent their election mail at the nonprofit rate, they would have longer delivery times.
Wyman told U.S.PS officials in a call earlier this week that the state would still receive the nonprofit marketing bulk rate but receive first-time mail service when sending votes to voters.
“I was really worried that this might be some kind of message to let us know that if we did our mailing at a nonprofit low rate we would have very long delivery times,” Wyman told CNN in a telephone interview. “They chose their words carefully … they said in principle, yes, the delivery times of email would be what we are used to.”
If Wyman had to switch from paying the non-profit bulk amount to paying the first-class rate, it would cost her $ 2.64 million to send 4.8 million votes, as opposed to the $ 432,000 it would their cost to send the votes at nine cents per piece via the nonprofit bulk rate.
As a state that has previously sent to every registered voter, Wyman and its bureau have a close relationship with their USPS opponents. Wyman said she is concerned about states that are new to mail-in voting options that do not have such strong ties already established with the post office.
Wyman said she had a call “every day with the postal service” leading to the Washington primary. “It’s kind of just our relationship we have with the postal service,” she said.
This story has been updated with additional comments from USPS and secretaries of state offices.
CNN’s Dianne Gallagher, Jessica Dean, Kelly Mena and Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.
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