USPS Wants to Make It Harder to Vote by Mail, Because Apparently Democracy Is Just Too Convenient
Look, I get it. The United States Postal Service has had a rough few years. They’re hemorrhaging money, they’re losing packages, and their trucks look like they were salvaged from a Mad Max set. But now, in a move that screams “we’re not trying to tank the election, we just *look* like we are,” the USPS has proposed a new rule that would basically make voting by mail about as easy as getting a refund from Comcast.
We’re talking about a proposed change to the “mail ballot” process that would require local election officials to process ballots at a different, more expensive rate than standard mail. The gist? If you want to mail in your vote, your local election board would have to pay a premium—like, first-class or even Priority Mail pricing—just to get those ballots to the processing centers on time. And if they don’t? Well, the USPS says they’ll just treat them like junk mail and deliver them whenever they feel like it. After the election. Oops.
Now, before you think this is some niche bureaucratic kerfuffle, let’s be real: this is a power move. A big, greasy, “we’re the only game in town” power move. The USPS is essentially saying, “Hey, election officials, you want us to do our job? Pay up. And if you don’t, we’ll just ghost your ballots like we do on every Amazon Prime package that says ‘out for delivery’ for three weeks.”
The proposal, which the USPS helpfully filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission, basically argues that election mail is a special service that requires extra handling. Which is true. But here’s the thing: it’s always been treated as a special service. And it’s always been handled at standard, affordable rates because, you know, democracy. But now, the post office is claiming that processing 20 million mail-in ballots is somehow a financial burden they can’t shoulder without jacking up prices.
Let’s do the math for a second. In 2020, roughly 43% of voters cast their ballots by mail. That’s over 65 million people who trusted the USPS to deliver their voice. And the USPS did deliver. Mostly. Except for that one time in Wisconsin where thousands of ballots arrived after the deadline. And that time in New York where they just straight-up lost 100,000 absentee ballot applications. But hey, no system is perfect, right?
Except this rule change isn’t about fixing a broken system. It’s about making the system so expensive and unpredictable that local election officials just give up and say, “You know what? Just come vote in person. It’s fine.” Meanwhile, the same folks who scream about “voter fraud” (which, by the way, is statistically less common than being struck by lightning while holding a winning lottery ticket) will be high-fiving each other for “securing” the ballot box.
The AITA of it all? The USPS is basically that friend who agrees to help you move apartments, then shows up with a Honda Civic and demands $50 for gas. “I’m doing you a favor,” they say, while you’re sweating over a sofa that clearly won’t fit. “But if you want it done right, you’re gonna have to pay for the U-Haul yourself.”
And let’s not forget the timing. This proposal doesn’t exactly scream “we’re a nonpartisan government agency.” It screams “we’ve seen the polls, and we’re hedging our bets.” The USPS is a federal agency, and its postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, is a Trump donor who has been trying to sabotage mail-in voting since before the 2020 election. Remember the whole “we’re removing mail sorting machines” fiasco? The “we’re banning overtime for postal workers” scandal? The “we’re not processing election mail on time” controversy that literally went to the Supreme Court? This guy is the gift that keeps on giving—if the gift is a slow-motion train wreck aimed directly at the ballot box.
Now, I’m not saying the USPS is evil. I’m just saying that if you look up “conflict of interest” in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of DeJoy standing next to a mailbox that’s on fire. The man has explicitly said he wants to run the USPS like a business. And businesses don’t care about democracy. They care about profit margins. So, of course, he’s going to make election mail more expensive. It’s the only way to make the post office profitable—by charging local governments more money to do the thing they’re legally required to do.
But here’s the kicker: the USPS is *already* subsidized by the federal government. They already get billions of dollars in taxpayer money to deliver mail to every address in the country, including rural areas where UPS and FedEx won’t touch with a ten-foot pole. So, charging election officials more is like a restaurant charging you a “breathing fee” for sitting at their table. It’s a stupid, unnecessary surcharge that makes you wonder why you even bother.
And the consequences? Oh, they’re real. If this rule goes into effect, expect longer lines at polling places. Expect more people to just give up and not vote at all. Expect a lot of “I mailed my ballot on October 15th, I swear” posts on Twitter that turn into “My ballot never arrived, and now my candidate lost by 200 votes” threads. This is the kind of rule that sounds boring on paper but ends up deciding the 2024 election in a way that makes everyone feel dirty.
So, what’s the solution? Well, for starters, maybe we should stop letting the USPS be run by someone who openly hates the idea of mail-in voting. But since that’s not happening, we’re left with two options: either election officials fork over the cash (which means less money
Final Thoughts
The proposed USPS rule change, under the guise of election security, feels less like a bureaucratic tweak and more like a quiet logistical chokehold on mail-in voting. Having covered election administration for years, I know that slowing down ballot delivery by even a day in a tight race is effectively a form of disenfranchisement. In the end, this isn't about saving the Postal Service; it's about picking which votes arrive on time, and that’s a dangerous game for any democracy to play.