The United States Postal Service (USPS) finalized a rule on postmarks to reflect changes in its mail pickup processes that could cause an uptick in blown deadlines for documents sent by post, including mail-in ballots.
The USPS proposed the rule in September to clarify that postmarks — the time stamp placed by the post office on pieces of mail, which is often used to establish the date something was sent for legal purposes — are applied at a regional processing facility, not when the USPS takes possession of the mail.
For decades, these dates were the same. But in an attempt to lower costs, USPS recently began eliminating evening mail pickups from post offices more than 50 miles away from a regional processing facility, which are mostly located in or around major cities.
Consequently, mail sent in rural areas will be postmarked and delivered at least one day later than before. And for mail voters, submitting their ballots the day or two before Election Day could mean it arrives too late to be counted — even in states that offer grace periods for tardy votes.
Post offices within 50 miles of a regional processing facility will still see evening pickup, meaning they should see no delay in postmarking. In addition to mail-in ballots, postmarks are frequently used for deadlines in legal filings, including tax payments.
The new mail pick up schedule was implemented as part of a series of controversial reforms aimed at increasing efficiency and reducing costs launched in 2021 by then-postmaster general Louis DeJoy, a major donor to President Donald Trump and Republicans generally.
By the time the overhaul is finished, it’ll affect pick-ups at roughly 24,000 of the country’s 33,700 post offices, impacting roughly 149 million Americans across 70% of U.S. zip codes.
Trump has long opposed mail in voting, blaming it — without evidence — for his loss in the 2020 elections, even calling for a complete ban.
Nearly 104,000 mail-in ballots were rejected last year because they arrived too late, according to federal data, but the partisan impact is unclear. Democrats are more likely to vote-by-mail, but the practice is popular in heavily-Republican rural areas.
Fourteen states (plus Washington, D.C. and other territories) offer grace periods to late-arriving ballots postmarked by Election Day, while the rest require the mailed-in votes to arrive by then. In 2025, four states — Kansas, North Dakota, Utah, and Ohio — eliminated their grace periods.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case* challenging Mississippi’s grace period, which could lead the high court to ending the practice altogether and to even more rejected ballots.
*Intervenor-defendants are represented in the lawsuit by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.
