USPS Mail And Package Deliveries Have Slowed. What Might That Mean For Election 2020?

Caption

Letter carriers load mail trucks for deliveries at a U.S. Postal Service facility.

Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The United States Postal Service remains Americans' favorite federal agency, according to Gallup and Pew polls. Over the years, though, USPS has been hit hard by the confluence of multiple recessions: first the advent of the internet, email and instant messaging; then COVID-19; and, increasingly, politics.

Cost-cutting procedures implemented after the appointment of new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on June 15 have customers complaining of delayed or degraded service. Those concerns are echoed by the American Postal Workers Union, as well as by voters looking ahead to Nov. 3, when more mail-in ballots will likely be used to decide elections than ever before.

On Second Thought sat down with Aaron Gordon, journalist for VICE's Motherboard covering the postal service, and Kevin Kosar, vice president of research and partnerships for R Street Institute, to discuss how new developments with the U.S. Postal Service may play into the 2020 election and beyond.

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

On how the Postal Service has been coping with new challenges posed by COVID-19

Kosar: In January of 2020, the Postal Service was an agency struggling to figure out its role in the 21st century. And it was an agency burdened by debt. Revenues were rarely able to meet the annual operating costs, which are substantial when you're delivering to 50 states, plus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

COVID-19 really hit the Postal Service hard, because it drove down the Postal Service's main line of business further. The Postal Service was set up to move paper mail — that's been its bread and butter, and that's been where the money comes from. But that's gone down further with the economic slowdown.

But, we've now had this huge influx of parcels. And parcels are not something the Postal Service was set up to deal with in large volumes. Their trucks are not designed for it. Their sortation machines are not designed for it. A whole host of internal operations are not designed for handling lots of parcels, and they're struggling to do so right now.

We've now had this huge influx of parcels. And parcels are not something the Postal Service was set up to deal with in large volumes.

On how the Postal Service has changed under new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy

Gordon: I think the most obvious change is that mail delivery has been slowed. I think customers around the country, to varying degrees, are seeing packages get scanned into a distribution facility and then just kind of hang there for days, if not weeks, with no updates.

And the reason is closely related to what Kevin said about the Postmaster General basically trying to cut out nearly all use of overtime across the system. Certainly that sounds good on paper. But it kind of ignores the bigger picture facing the post office. According to many of the people I've spoken to, there are just staffing shortages in a lot of cases. So, you know, with package volume surging by some reports are as high as 60 to 80 percent in some areas in recent months, postal workers I've talked to said they just need more time to do all that work.

And that results in more overtime. Because over the last — I'm trying to remember off the top of my head — something like five years, the Post Office has cut somewhere around 77,000 workers, according to the Office of Inspector General of the Post Office. And they need to have their existing staff work longer hours to deliver those packages. Now they have a Postmaster General who says, "No, don't work those longer hours." And the logical result is the mail is not getting delivered.

They need to have their existing staff work longer hours to deliver those packages. Now they have a Postmaster General who says, "No, don't work those longer hours." And the logical result is the mail is not getting delivered.

On what it means to have confidence in the Postal Service eroding right now

Kosar: It’s troubling, especially because we’re going into this election, wherein the postal service is going to play an incredibly important role. It’s going to deliver more ballots than it ever has before. And, for people to be nervous about that – for people to wonder if their ballots will arrive, or if they turn them in, if they’ll get lost by the Post Office – that is something we do not want.

And that is something that I would like to see the Postal Service address in a more forthright way. The PMG [Postmaster General] has a megaphone. And he can explain that the Postal Service still has a very huge infrastructure. Certainly it has laid off, or let people retire and not replaced them, and so their workforce size has gone down. Certainly COVID has taken a few thousand workers out of the Postal Service. But they have a massive sortation network – just these huge, factory-type places that can sort paper mail. They’ve got the mechanical capacity to sort the mail and move it along fast enough. And I think that’s something that should be conveyed to the American public. Because most certainly, they’ve been getting a lot of conflicting signals.

On structural overlaps between USPS and private companies like Amazon, FedEx, and UPS

Gordon: I think a lot of Americans don't realize how intertwined the services often are. For example, if you order something online from another company and they send you a tracking number and it says, "Shipping via UPS," that means that that private business contracted with UPS to handle the shipping. But along the way, the odds are pretty good that UPS at some point is going to hand that package off to the Post Office — to USPS — to, most likely, complete that delivery. This is also something that Amazon does, and something that FedEx will do on occasion as well.

And on the flip side, the Post Office will often use FedEx for transporting express packages via air. They'll use UPS's network too, and they'll use a host of private contractors to transfer packages around the country. 

So it's tough to talk about them in total isolation. You talk about, like, privatizing the post office, whatever that might look like — [but] they already deal with private companies all the time. They already rely on private companies, and private companies rely on them.

On how the U.S. Postal Service fits into a bigger picture on Election Day

Gordon: Delivering the ballots is just one part of a successful mail-in balloting effort. You know, the local election boards — that are responsible for actually counting the votes and whatnot — are also responsible for creating realistic timetables for ballots to go out, get filled in, and mailed back before the election is over.

And I think an issue in some states is that those windows are very tight. They can send out ballots very late, and they have to get them back very quickly. And I think realistically, just a certain amount of due diligence — both from election boards to make sure they're accounting for the changes that the Post Office is undergoing, and also from voters to, you know, maybe put in that request weeks in advance as opposed to days — I think all of those things are important, and could help mitigate some of the challenges that the Post Office is going to be facing.

The local election boards — that are responsible for actually counting the votes and whatnot — are also responsible for creating realistic timetables for ballots to go out, get filled in, and mailed back before the election is over.

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