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This is all still true boltsmag.org/mail-voting-...
“First: USPS no longer automatically postmarks mail on the day it is received. Instead, they postmark it when they process it, sometimes after it has traveled hundreds of miles to a central facility, which can take days. This matters greatly in states that require mail ballots or voter registration forms to be postmarked by a certain day to be valid, as Bolts explained earlier this year. If voters mail their ballots or forms close to the deadline, USPS may not postmark them in time; the ballots would then get tossed by election officials. There’s evidence from primaries held this year that the change is having an impact; election offices are reporting a marked increase in ballots that are rejected because their postmark is late. In Yakima County, Washington, for instance, roughly 5 percent of mail ballots cast for the Aug. 4 primary were rejected this summer, up from 1 percent between 2016 and 2024. Michelle Kanter Cohen, policy director and senior counsel for the Fair Elections Center, is afraid that voters are not aware of this issue. “People have generally assumed that when you put your mail in the official blue box, that it will be postmarked that day,” she said. “But it is clear from this rule that this is no longer the case.””
September 15, 2026 at 1:00 AM