In an effort to guarantee that all absentee ballots for the 2022 midterm elections are securely delivered on time, the U.S. Postal Service announced on Wednesday they're creating an election division to take care of any issues, according to the Associated Press.
During the 2020 election, 46% of Americans voted by absentee or mail-in ballot, according to the Pew Research Center.
The COVID-19 pandemic created challenges for the USPS during the 2020 election, but they were still able to deliver more than 135 million ballots to and from voters, and had a 97.9% delivery rate from voters to election officials within three days, the AP noted.
Overall, the USPS successfully delivered 99.89% of ballots within seven days of when voters dropped them off in 2020.
Only 32% of those who voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election did so by absentee or mail-in ballot, compared to 58% of those who voted for Joe Biden, according to the Pew Research Center.
Additionally, 44% of absentee or mail-in voters submitted their ballots by mail, while 41% returned them to a designated drop box, and just 15% delivered them to an election official or poll worker. An overwhelming 76% returned their ballots before the week leading up to the election, compared to 23% doing so in the week leading up to Election Day.
"We are fully committed to the secure and timely delivery of the nation’s election mail," Adrienne Marshall, executive director of the division, said.
She added the Election and Government Mail Services will be in charge of "election mail strike teams" in every local and district community throughout the country to monitor any problems and make sure that the ballots are delivered promptly.
In the past, the USPS would handle any issues with ballots one at a time, but now there will be an entire division to focus on election mail. The USPS said there has already been about 40 million ballots mailed to and from voters during the primary elections this year.
On July 28, the USPS said in news release the average time to deliver a piece of mail or package over the first three weeks of the fiscal fourth quarter was just 2.5 days.
From July 1 to July 20, first-class mail was delivered 93% "on time against the USPS service standard," which was actually a 0.3 decrease from the third quarter. Additionally, 93.8% of marketing mail was delivered on time and 86.4% of periodicals were delivered on time compared to the standard service.
"One of the goals of Delivering for America, the Postal Service’s 10-year plan for achieving financial sustainability and service excellence, is to meet or exceed 95 percent on-time service performance for all mail and shipping products once all elements of the plan are implemented," the USPS said.
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