WASHINGTON — U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy tried to assure a House subcommittee Thursday his agency is ready for the election this November.
“Let me be clear, the Postal Service is ready to successfully deliver the nation's mail in ballots,” DeJoy said.
Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, who chairs the subcommittee on financial services and general government, said reduced mail routes and rising delivery costs have frustrated customers and raised concerns about the Postal Service’s ability to deliver mail-in ballots on time.
“All of us up here have heard from constituents who had concerns about declining standards at the Postal Service,” Joyce said.
DeJoy was adamant that voters should not worry, saying the agency’s success in delivering a historic volume of ballots during the 2020 pandemic prepared the agency for 2024. He said ballots are expedited with “extraordinary measures,” and that employees are going through training on how to handle election mail.
“We do everything we possibly can in an imperfect system that expects the perfect,” DeJoy said. “And we're a good target for a lot of blame.”
DeJoy was grilled by Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., who criticized a pilot program that’s been implemented in Green Bay.
“In Wisconsin, two-day delivery dropped 20 points: 91.5% on time to 70.5%,” Pocan said to DeJoy in the hearing.
The Regional Transportation Optimization (RTO) initiative reduces the number of pickups from select post offices, meaning mail waits longer to move.
“And if that happens with election ballots, that could be a real problem,” Pocan told Spectrum News.
In the hearing, Pocan criticized DeJoy for focusing on cost savings instead of delivering the mail. The program has also been piloted in Richmond, Virginia.
“The first rockets that went to the moon blew up. OK, that's what pilots are for,” DeJoy said.
“Thanks for blowing up Wisconsin,” Pocan said back.
Pocan then asked for an explanation as to how DeJoy would fix the mail issues Wisconsin is experiencing.
“We're going to do a series of transactional adjustments and service measurement adjustments and service metric adjustments, as we move forward with this, that are going to get your service to be 95% reliable,” DeJoy said.
Pocan said he's "heartened" that more RTO or Local Transportation Optimization (LTO) programs won’t be implemented until after the election, so other states don’t see a reduction in service, too.
"Might I recommend you considered extending that period to forever," Pocan said.
The postmaster general said Americans voting by mail should send in their ballots at least a week before the deadline when it must be received.
“We do not determine when election officials mail ballots out to voters or when voters return ballots back to boards of elections via the mail,” he said.
A USPS spokesperson released the following statement to Spectrum News:
"The U.S. Postal Service is committed to the secure, timely delivery of the nation’s Election Mail. In 2024, just as we have in previous elections, the Postal Service will collect, process, transport, and deliver the nation’s Election Mail when public policy makers choose to utilize the mail as a part of their election system or when voters choose to use our services to participate in an election. We are employing robust and proven processes to ensure proper handling and delivery of all Election Mail, including ballots.
"Regarding the pilot, which is an initiative we refer to as Local Transportation Optimization (LTO), starting October 21, we will implement activities to expedite the delivery of ballot mail and ensure that all ballots mailed from LTO sites will be postmarked on the day they are entered into the mailstream. These activities consist of targeted utilization of extra resources and are designed to offset any potential impacts to ballots. The Postmaster General provided more detail on this topic in his testimony today (attached for your convenience).
"Wisconsin voters should feel great confidence in choosing to vote by mail. Also, as a general matter, for FY24 Q4 to date, 97.06% of all First-Class Mail in the Wisconsin District has arrived within a day of our service standard and is delivered in an average of 2.6 days.
"As a reminder, our common-sense voter recommendation remains that domestic voters should mail their completed ballot before Election Day, and at least one week prior to the deadline by which their completed ballot must be received by their local election official. All voters should check their state deadlines, links to which are available on our website at https://www.usps.com/votinginfo."