Election officials: Mail ballot rule too late
City of Milwaukee Election Commission workers process absentee ballots April 7, 2020, in downtown Milwaukee, Wis.
Current and former election officials said it would take something short of "an act of God" for their states and localities to comply with a new U.S. Postal Service mail-in ballot rule just weeks before the midterm elections.
The rule, finalized Wednesday in response to an executive order President Donald Trump issued in March, requires state and local election officials to submit voters' names and addresses to USPS through a new portal.
Only voters whose information is submitted by states would be allowed to receive and return mail-in ballots. The rule also establishes new design requirements, including a tracking barcode for mail-in ballot envelopes that states must create and submit to the USPS for approval.
"This is a logistical nightmare," Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said. "It's just too late from a pragmatic, practical application perspective."
On Aug. 24, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the USPS to issue the rule. It will remain in effect for the midterms unless courts block it.
Lawsuits over its constitutionality were filed, including one by 24 states and another by voting rights groups. In both, a judge granted a temporary restraining order blocking part of the rule from taking effect. A joint hearing on a long-term block is scheduled for Thursday.
The USPS did not respond to emailed questions about the rule, including when states can submit voter names to the portal, what standards they will need to meet to have envelopes approved and how training for USPS employees will be carried out to ensure ballots are properly handled. USPS previously said it cannot comment on topics subject to pending litigation.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said the USPS rule "was proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election."
Election planning starts months, or even years, before early voting begins, they said, and ballot language must be cleared with state officials. Envelopes were purchased months ago, they added, and some already have stamps affixed. All of this was done on a tight budget, said Carolina Lopez, a former MiamiDade County, Florida, election administrator.
Because the Constitution gives states authority over election administration, every state has different laws, rules and standards for what ballots and envelopes look like, when they must be mailed to voters and how and when mailed ballots can be returned.
Local officials must comply with federal deadlines to send ballots to military and overseas voters at least 45 days before the election — that's in mid-September. States also have laws determining when ballots must be mailed to voters.
Twenty states send mail-in ballots to voters 45 days or more before an election, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. For example, North Carolina and Delaware begin sending ballots out the first week of September.
Fontes said he's operating on faith that courts will halt the USPS rule from taking effect in the 2026 midterms.
"Otherwise, what am I supposed to do? Go into a full-fledged panic and send everybody into emergency mode down a path that they very likely won't have to finish and upset the already busy, underfunded, understaffed apple cart that we're already running down the trail?" he said. "We just can't do this. We don't live in a world where miracles happen."
States that can't or won't comply with the new rule won't be allowed to send ballots in the mail. That would be a particular problem for eight states and Washington, D.C., which allow all elections to be conducted entirely by mail.
Voting by mail became so popular — almost 30% of voters cast an absentee ballot in the 2024 election — that many states don't have enough equipment to conduct all in-person elections if they are not allowed to mail ballots, state election officials said. In some cases, not enough equipment, such as private booths to mark ballots, is available today for states to purchase on short notice.
Maricopa County, Arizona, serves so many voters that it purchases special ballot paper more than a year in advance of an election, Fontes said. Obtaining enough of the paper, he added, for reprinting ballots to meet the new USPS specifications, or to have sufficient pre-printed ballots for increased in-person polling locations, might not be possible.
In Orange County, Calif., military and overseas ballots will be printed before the end of this week</ span>, said Bob Page, the county's registrar of voters.
"For our 1.9 million voters locally, we will start printing those ballots the week of Labor Day," he said.
California, which has more than 23 million registered voters, is among the states that send ballots by mail to every voter.
Many states and counties use the same handful of printers around the country, so they cannot wait until the USPS approves an envelope design or voter lists, said Amanda Gonzalez, the Jefferson County, Colorado, clerk and recorder. Many printers have contracts to produce ballots and addressed envelopes.
"They have top security and they make sure that our processes are well done," Gonzalez said. "There just isn't a lot of wiggle room."
The ballot certification deadline in Colorado is Sept. 2, she said.
Ricky Keech, deputy elections director for Loudoun County, Virginia, said the final proofs of the mail-in ballots will be sent to voters the week of Sept. 18.
"The deadlines are pretty much passed at this point and our envelopes for this election were printed a month ago," Keech said.
Several election officials and government advocates questioned how quickly the USPS can stand up the systems necessary to ensure the rule can be followed for this election.
William Hensley, a former USPS election mail specialist, said the USPS has multiple responsibilities to quickly accomplish to make the rule work for 2026. The agency's cyber and technology team, he added, is "totally capable" of standing up the infrastructure needed for a portal for states to submit voters' names.
However, USPS employees "will need to undertake a lot of training to make sure that they're getting this right and that they're not inadvertently rejecting compliant mail pieces that could delay delivery of those ballots," he said. "That training doesn't happen overnight."
