Last month’s scathing audit from the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General is just another stark reminder that we’re handing the security of our nation’s elections over to an agency that’s struggling to manage a standard mail route. The audit laid bare an unsettling picture: numerous USPS facilities are stumbling through the basic protocols needed to secure and deliver election mail.
This isn’t just bureaucratic inefficiency; it’s a direct threat to the integrity of our elections. The audit was comprehensive, examining facilities across 13 states and Puerto Rico during primary elections early this year. The findings? A dismal failure to comply with established procedures for handling election mail, a cornerstone of our democratic process.
According to the report, postal workers are skipping essential daily checks and mishandling critical logs that track the arrival and processing of political mail. This is a gaping hole in the fabric of electoral security, leaving the door wide open for errors and delays that could sway the outcome of elections.
But it doesn’t stop there. The audit points to “operational risks” that could delay the timely processing and delivery of election mail. It’s an absurdity that in some of the audited facilities, ballots didn’t reach election offices in time to be counted. How can we stand by and watch the bedrock of our democracy crumble due to logistical incompetence?
This debacle illustrates a broader issue: a lack of training and a severe underestimation of the importance of handling election mail with the precision and seriousness it demands. The very agency that has become, as some say, the largest precinct in our elections, shows it’s woefully unprepared for the task.
What we’re witnessing is a profound mismanagement of responsibility by the Postal Service. As the 2024 general election approaches, the time for patchwork fixes and half-measures is over. We need decisive action to overhaul how election mail is processed and handled. If not, we’re not just risking delayed mail—we’re risking the very integrity of our electoral process.
