Democratic and Republican secretaries of state highlighted incidents of voters being disenfranchised by ballots not being delivered on time.
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Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, has been overseeing a sweeping overhaul of the United States Postal Service.
A bipartisan group of election officials sounded the alarm on Wednesday about significant problems in the Postal Service in delivering mailed ballots, highlighting previous cases “in nearly every state” of ballots being delivered “well after Election Day.”
The National Association of Secretaries of State, a nonpartisan organization representing the top election officials in each state, wrote a letter to Louis DeJoy, the head of the Postal Service, saying that election officials had “raised serious questions” about “lost or delayed election mail” and other problems affecting the agency’s ability to deliver ballots on time ahead of Election Day. The letter added that some of the issues have led to voters being disenfranchised.
“We implore you to take immediate and tangible corrective action to address the ongoing performance issues,” the six-page letter said, adding that “failure to do so will risk limiting voter participation and trust in the election process.”
The association of top election officials is pointedly nonpartisan — with its leadership alternating between Democrats and Republicans. Both the outgoing president, Steve Simon, Democrat of Minnesota, and the incoming president, Michael Watson, Republican of Mississippi, signed the letter.
The Postal Service is in the middle of a sweeping overhaul in an effort to stabilize its finances, after losses of $87 billion over the past 14 years. The effort, led by Mr. DeJoy, has temporarily led to worse service in areas like Atlanta — a big city in a crucial swing state. On-time delivery of first-class mail in the area dropped below 60 percent after a new processing center opened in February, according to the agency’s data. Across the Georgia district, on-time delivery of first-class mail dropped to as low as 35.8 percent in March.
(Those issues later improved — in the Atlanta region, 84.9 percent of first-class mail was delivered on time as of the week ending Aug. 23, according to Postal Service data.)
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Source: nytimes.com
