Missing mail, delayed packages: How USPS woes could impact Georgia election

Systemic issues at the new U.S. Postal Service center in Palmetto, Georgia have left customers frustrated, with some waiting for weeks for their mail to be processed.

The USPS center, which opened Feb. 24, has experienced problems from the start, from lost mail to packages that get rerouted right before arriving to their destination. Only 36% of its inbound mail is delivered on time.

But the problem extends far beyond receiving packages on time. The delays have gotten so bad that officials are now worried they could impact people’s ability to vote by mail-in absentee ballots during Georgia’s primary election this month.

Absentee ballots have taken on a greater role since the 2020 election, when many voters opted to cast their ballot by mail during the height of the pandemic. The practice continued in 2022 – over 6% of all Georgians who voted in the 2022 general election did so using absentee ballots.

That chunk of the electorate could go underrepresented in Georgia’s primary election if USPS does not resolve its issues soon. But how did things get this bad?

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Decades-long financial hardship at USPS

Financial hardship first struck USPS in 2007, during the height of the Great Recession. The Postal Service continued to lose more money than it earned during every year of the 2010s.

When current Postmaster General Louis DeJoy joined the agency in 2020, he said USPS had been facing a “financial death spiral” for years. In response, he issued a 10-year plan called “Delivering for America” in March 2021. The $40 billion dollar plan was meant to stabilize the Postal Service’s finances by temporarily slowing first class mail delivery, cutting post office hours, and raising prices.

But the Postal Service has continued to lose money, totaling a net loss of $27.1 billion between fiscal years 2020 and 2023. The agency has so far lost $2 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2024.

The new processing center in Palmetto is the second in the nation to open under DeJoy’s 10-year plan. The center consolidated services from four existing facilities into one.

The result of the move: cluttered mailrooms, long lines of USPS trucks waiting outside the facility, and an audit from the Office of Inspector General.

The OIG conducted a similar audit of the new Postal Service center out of Richmond, Virginia. The audit found that challenges with the opening caused “a decrease in service performance for the Richmond region that continued for four months after launch.”

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How Georgia voters may be affected

With Georgia’s primary election just weeks away, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that some counties are working with their local post offices to bypass the Palmetto facility entirely.

“You’ll see that county elections directors are very proactive on that,” Raffensperger said.

Otherwise, state election workers are urging voters to get their absentee ballots early and track them for the election.

During an April 16 hearing with Congress, DeJoy said he thinks the Palmetto delays will be worked out within 60 days.

That will fall after Georgia’s primary election.

An elections supervisor out of Paulding County, Deidra Holden, told WSB-TV Atlanta that she wanted to “encourage the voters [that got] an absentee ballot, to have one of their family members return it for them, lock it in, or use one of our drop boxes during the early voting hours.”

Voters have until May 21 at 7 p.m. to return their absentee ballots for the primary election. If possible, skip the postage stamp altogether.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: USPS Delays Could Impact Absentee Voting in Georgia's Primary Election