The U.S. Postal Service system of handling and delivering mail ballots often leads to rejected or late ballots, election security advocates contend.  

The Election Integrity Network issued two recent reports on the handling of mail ballots by postal employees, and the use of regional mail processing centers across state lines. The reports claim that current practices could either result in delayed ballots or confusion over postmarks during an election. 

In the 2022 election, 549,824 mail ballots were rejected, about 1.5% of all absentee/mail-in ballots, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission found. Common reasons for rejected ballots include non-matching signatures and missed deadlines.

“From the outside, those are just ‘undeliverable’ or ‘missing’ ballots in a large system,” an Election Integrity Network report released Monday says. “For each voter, it is the loss of the one voice they have in their own government.” 

For its part, the U.S. Postal Service counters that local election officials are responsible for matters such as enforcing deadlines, using barcodes, identifying eligible voters, and ensuring correct addresses for ballots. 

Further, the USPS is held accountable by the Postal Regulatory Commission, as well as through congressional oversight, said USPS spokeswoman Cathy Purcell.

“The report’s statements concerning the Postal Service reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the Postal Service’s role, which is to process, transport, and deliver mail, including Election Mail. The Postal Service plays no role in the administration of elections,” Purcell told The Daily Signal.

Part of the problem, noted the Election Integrity Network’s more lengthy report from last week, is the U.S. Postal Service lumps election mail in with all mail, shipped to regional shipping centers that are sometimes out of state where the postmarks are then issued.  

Thus, even if a voter mails their ballot on the day of the deadline, it might travel out of state to a distribution center and be postmarked the next day, the report contends.

“The USPS should immediately stop delaying election mail by using the new system, and start handling all of it locally without sending it to the regional processing centers,” the report says.  

The report contends the USPS is effectively America’s largest â€œprecinct” because it has the largest number of individuals handling election mail with little or no citizen oversight. 

“There are so many problems with the U.S. Postal Service. I don’t think we should have universal mail-in voting with so many vulnerabilities,” Ned Jones, executive director of the Election Integrity Network, told The Daily Signal. “It often leaves the state and comes back. In the processing is where it gets the postmark.” 

The report from last week was based on data gathered by the EIN’s Vote-By-Mail/USPS National Working Group, with members from more than 20 states, Jones said.  

Purcell said that “state boundaries have nothing to do with the efficient movement of mail.”

She said a Post Office clerk can, when close to an election date, expedite delivery of a ballot to an election office, “without sending the ballot to the processing plant for cancellation and sorting.”   

“We employ a robust and proven process to ensure proper handling of all Election Mail, including ballots,” she said.

The network’s report also says that unreliable barcode tracking has frequently missed scans for ballots.

“The USPS tracking system isn’t very good. It’s all done by machine and many scans are missed,” the report states. “Unbelievably, the last scan before delivery is not as the letter carrier delivers the mail, to the voter or back to the election office, but in the processing center before the letter carrier gets it.”

Purcell stressed the USPS educates voters to mail ballots in a timely manner well before deadlines.  

“The long-standing Postal Service guidance on mailing ballots has been to mail your ballot before Election Day and at least one week before the deadline by which it must be received by your election office,” Purcell said. “The postmark date on a mail item doesn’t always match the day you mailed an item.”

She said the Postal Service strongly recommends the use of barcodes, but cannot mandate local election offices use them. She further noted, “It is the responsibility of the election office to maintain accurate names and addresses if it chooses to employ vote-by-mail.” 

The information comes as the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a major case about whether to continue counting mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day.  

The Election Integrity Network report made several recommendations.  

“The USPS should develop a system that accurately maintains a ‘chain of custody’ for all election mail, and reconcile ballots delivered, plus undeliverable ballots returned to the election office, for every election jurisdiction,” the report says.  

It also says the Postal Service “should have a system that prevents election mail from being delivered to a voter who is no longer at their registration address.” 

In December 2024, after that year’s election, the Postal Service noted it handled almost 100 million ballots, and 99.8% were delivered within a week. The USPS said the average delivery time from a voter to election officials was only a day.  

However, in April 2025, the USPS Office of Inspector General found about 40 million ballots lacked tracking data, and found “confusion in the field” about temporary mail flow changes for the election season. 

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