USPS Makes Federal Approval a Delivery Requirement
The U.S. Postal Service unveiled a streamlined interpretation of mail delivery Friday, announcing that election envelopes should reach their destinations only after the federal government approves the people waiting for them. The policy replaces the cumbersome democratic presumption that eligible voters may receive and return ballots with a more efficient standard under which citizens remain eligible unless a database, barcode, envelope flap or executive-branch spreadsheet feels otherwise.
The final rule, prepared despite federal court injunctions in California and Massachusetts, would require states to surrender voter information, adopt new ballot-envelope procedures and confirm that voters appear on federally approved lists. States declining to comply could find their ballots excluded from postal transportation before the Nov. 3 midterms. Officials stressed that the injunctions prohibit implementation but do not interfere with the agency’s essential preparatory work of behaving as though the courts had merely submitted customer feedback.
President Donald Trump praised the plan as a major upgrade from the nation’s obsolete “eligible voters get to vote” model. “We’re making the mail incredibly secure, maybe the most secure mail ever, because if a ballot never arrives, nobody can steal it, count it wrong or vote against me with it,” Trump said. “The postal people understand this. A ballot sitting safely in a facility is a perfect ballot.” Postmaster General David Steiner has argued that USPS should match state voter lists against ballots entering the mail, converting letter carriers into federal election screeners without burdening Congress with the inconvenience of authorizing it.
Voters would remain free to place ballots in mailboxes, preserving democracy’s traditional opening ceremony and providing the public with a brief sense of participation. Completion of the journey would depend on state compliance, federal databases, envelope design, barcode compatibility, pending litigation and the judiciary’s willingness to stop treating constitutional authority as something more than a branding guideline. Birthday cards, utility bills and furniture catalogs will continue moving normally unless recipients attempt to use them to elect a government. An undelivered ballot is now the highest form of election security.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.