1/6 The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 allowed election mail to be sent using reduced Nonprofit Standard Mail rates (now called Marketing Mail), but there's apparently not been clarity or uniformity about how this mail is treated.
2/6 The USPS says, “Just because we put an official election mail logo on a piece, it doesn’t automatically upgrade that to an expedited level of service." For ballots sent out at Marketing Mail rates, the standard is 3-10 days (about 90% of MM meet this goal) with no guarantees.
3/6 Responding to a USPS OIG report focusing on service performance in the 2018 midterms, the USPS objected to the way the OIG used the First Class service standard (2-5 days) even though a lot of election mail goes as Marketing Mail. uspsoig.gov/sites/default/…
4/6 The OIG responded that "the data the Postal Service provided did not separate service performance scores by class of mail." Moreover, management at seven facilities told the OIG "that they treat Election and Political Mail as First-Class Mail."
5/6 "Since the remaining seven facility managers did not object to us comparing Election and Political Mail against the FC Mail goal, we concluded that this was how this mail was generally handled. Accordingly, we compared Election and Political Mail against the FC Mail goal."
6/6 So now the USPS is saying election mail will be processed as the class it was sent. Does that mean plant managers will be told not to expedite election mail sent as Marketing Mail the way they have in the past?
