Fortunately, Deputy Post Master General Ronald Stroman and Election Mail Management Specialist Dan Bentley understand that tens of millions of American voters receive their ballot not by a poll worker, but from their postal carrier; and that delivering democracy is one of the USPS’s most critical functions. Thankfully the United States Postal Service (USPS) championed the need to consider election mail in the UPU withdrawal conversation at the very highest level of the agency.
Yesterday, September 25, at the Extraordinary Congress meeting of the UPU in Geneva, an agreement was reached to remedy the disparity in rates to the satisfaction of the United States so that we will remain in the Union. There will be no interruption in mail delivery globally. Ballots mailed out last week to voters will have the ability to be returned by post.
Disaster narrowly averted.
However, as details of the agreement unfold it will be important to understand the impact on prices for ballots. CNBC reports “the bulk of the changes would apply to letters and packages, under 4.4 lbs., sent internationally. While a relatively small subset of global commerce, it captures military mail, absentee ballots, retail catalogs, trade journals and light e-commerce purchases.” While we don’t anticipate that the increase will rival that of the prices private carriers, there may be changes to watch out for. Election officials should follow the Federal Voting Assistance Program’s guidelines on use of the proper postal indicia.