USPS Ballot Guidance: Mail Early, Ask for Hand Postmark
The U.S. Postal Service is telling voters to mail completed ballots at least a week before their state's deadline. In states with a grace period for late-arriving ballots, it says voters should go to a post office counter and ask for a manual postmark.
The guidance was described in reporting published Oct. 9. It applies to voters who plan to return ballots by mail in the general election. USPS also advises any customer who wants a same-day postmark to ask a retail associate at the counter for a hand cancellation, a service it provides for free NPR.
The agency plans special postmarking steps at affected post offices about a week before Election Day under its "extraordinary measures" policy for federal general elections. Starting Oct. 24, 10 days before Election Day, some post offices may extend opening and closing times by a half-hour NPR.
Starting Oct. 26, post offices affected by Regional Transportation Optimization are told to separate returned ballots from other mail. That lets managers add postmarks by hand on the day the ballots are collected. The separation step is part of the 2026 General Election Extraordinary Measures memo issued Sept. 30 and a separate 2026 Guidance on Postmarking Ballots memo issued Oct. 1 NPR.
The steps respond to mailing changes USPS has rolled out since April 2025. The agency calls the effort Regional Transportation Optimization, part of a 10-year reorganization plan it began in 2021. The changes include fewer daily mail pickups and new processing rules at certain post offices, especially in rural areas.
As a result, USPS may not stamp an envelope with the date on the same day a letter carrier collects it or a voter drops it at a post office or collection box. A postmark works like a receipt date. Election officials often use the USPS postmark date to decide whether a ballot was sent by Election Day NPR.
That separation step was not in place during the 2026 primary elections, when ballot rejection rates increased in multiple states. Ballots rejected for late postmarks increased sharply in the vote-by-mail states of Washington and Oregon, according to an analysis published Sept. 8. Alaska accepts absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day and sent from within the U.S. up to 10 days after elections, and the state said mail delivery problems kept dozens of ballots from rural Alaska from counting in its primary AP.
Elena Patel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, estimated that an additional 43,000 to 55,000 ballots around the country could be rejected for arriving late in the general election because of the transportation optimization effort. An earlier NPR analysis of mail voting found that more than 50,000 absentee and mail-in ballots were rejected for arriving late. The Supreme Court upheld grace periods for mail-in ballots in a ruling issued June 29 NPR.
USPS has also published formal election-mail documents for this cycle. It released the 2026-2027 Official Election Mail Guide, known as Kit 600, and published Postal Bulletin 22712 on Oct. 1 with 2026 election information. The postmarking guidance memo said a copy will be posted on the Postal Service intranet for election-mail operations.
In its election-mail materials, USPS defines Election Mail as any item mailed to or from authorized election officials that lets citizens take part in voting. That includes ballots, sample ballots, voter registration cards, absentee voting applications and polling place notices. It defines Ballot Mail as a subset of Election Mail sent to or from an authorized election official, and more narrowly as any mailpiece with a live ballot that can be used to vote. The agency employs more than 640,000 employees to deliver Election Mail.
USPS distinguishes Election Mail from Political Mail. It defines Political Mail as material mailed for campaign purposes by a registered political candidate, campaign committee, party committee, political action committee or group doing issues advocacy or voter mobilization. The Official Election Mail logo is a registered trademark for use only on official Election Mail. Use of the logo is not required for election officials, but it appears on most Election Mail. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is responsible for safety of all mail, including Election Mail.
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission is giving parallel advice to administrators and voters. In a memo on postmark information, the commission advises election officials in states that use postmarks to remind voters they may request a manual hand-applied postmark at a USPS retail counter. Its Mail Ballot Return Toolkit states that a postmark is not enough and advises voters to mail early or use a drop box or bring the ballot to the election office. For drop boxes, the commission advises voters to return mail ballots no later than the close of polls on Election Day, noting each state has its own rules and requirements.
The broader context here for election administrators is timing and proof. Postmarks decide close cases in grace-period states, and the shift to next-day processing in some facilities creates a gap between when a voter hands over a ballot and when it gets marked. Manual postmarks, ballot separation after Oct. 26, and counter hand-cancels are workarounds for that gap. The open question for November is whether voters hear about the counter step in time and whether local post offices apply the extraordinary-measures instructions consistently.
