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Mail voters in 18 jurisdictions may need to take extra care to ensure that their ballots aren’t rejected under new guidance from the U.S. Postal Service about how it processes mail.
In a notice in the Federal Register that took effect Dec. 24, the Postal Service announced that it may not postmark a piece of mail on the same day that it takes possession of it. The change could affect thousands of people who vote by mail in places that allow mail ballots to be counted if they are received after Election Day but postmarked by Election Day.
Those policies are in effect in 14 states — Alaska, California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia — along with the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The new guidance means that, even if a voter delivers their ballot to the Postal Service by Election Day, it may nevertheless be rejected if it is not postmarked that day.
However, voters in these places who mail their ballots on Election Day can still try to ensure that their ballots will count by bringing it to a post office and requesting a manual postmark indicating when it was dropped off.
States move to educate voters
States are already taking steps to educate voters so they aren’t disenfranchised. For instance, Oregon updated its guidance in November to tell voters to mail their ballots a week ahead of time, or else to use a drop box.
“I’m deeply concerned that USPS is doubling down on making it harder for Oregonians, especially rural Oregonians, to vote,” Secretary of State Tobias Reed said. “We’re already taking action, providing updated guidance to make sure every legal vote gets counted, and we’ll continue to sound the alarm: This is a threat to Oregonians’ right to hold government accountable.”
In response to criticism, the Postal Service clarified that the new rule “does not change any existing postal operations or postmarking practices” but rather codifies how postmarks have long been applied. The announcement said that mail is postmarked once it reaches a processing facility, which may not be the same day that it’s dropped off at a mailbox or post office. It noted, however, that these lags have become more common since the implementation of the Regional Transportation Optimization initiative in 2025. Under that initiative, mail that is dropped off more than 50 miles away from a regional hub is collected the next day rather than the same day.
“As explained in the Proposed Rule, postmarks applied at originating processing facilities have never provided a perfectly reliable indicator of the date on which the Postal Service first accepted possession of a mailpiece, and this fact will become more common under RTO,” the Postal Service wrote in the Federal Register. “Therefore, to the extent that customers currently have this view of the postmark, it does not reflect the realities of postal operations.”
The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy research organization, found that under USPS’ new Regional Processing and Distribution Center network, nearly 50% of post offices are more than 100 miles from their processing center, meaning the mail dropped off at those post office is subject to getting postmarked at least one day late.
According to the Brookings report, some of the 14 states that accept properly postmarked ballots after Election Day, such as California, carry a low risk of postmark delays, but in more rural states such as Mississippi and West Virginia, more than 95% of ZIP codes are at a high risk of postmark delays.
Trump opposes accepting ballots after Election Day
President Donald Trump has long railed against mail voting for what he sees as its susceptibility to fraud. In August, he said in a social media post that he would “lead a movement” to get rid of it.
And he’s taken particular issue with the practice of allowing mail ballots to be received after Election Day. In March 2025, he issued an executive order that asserted in part that federal law prohibited ballots from being counted if they arrived after Election Day. While the president does not have authority over how elections are run, several states changed their statutes following that executive order. The Republican National Committee is also arguing in a case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court that accepting mail ballots after Election Day violates federal law.
Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group and a former election official, agreed that the new rule is just a clarification of current practices and said that, to an extent, election officials have always had to contend with postmark issues or late-arriving mail.
She noted that postmark issues can affect not only ballots, but also other election-related mail, such as voter registration applications. For instance, Tennessee allows voters to register so long as the postmark on their mailed application shows it was sent by the deadline.
“I think the main thing for election officials is going to be where do we get the resources, where do we get the expertise, to do more voter outreach and communication,” she said. “How are we going to inform voters of what they need to do so that their registration form arrives on time, so that their mail ballot arrives on time, so that their ballot can be counted? To me, that’s the bigger question.”
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.
