This June, the final count in Utah’s Iron County left Jon Whittaker feeling ill.

Whittaker, a county clerk who runs elections in the southwestern Utah county, received more than 400 mail-in ballots for the primary that were postmarked after the state’s legal deadline of June 24. Those votes had to be left out of the official tally of results.

“It was several times more than what we are used to seeing,” Whittaker says. “Because that canvass of the will of the people is a sacred thing, it made me sick.”

The U.S. Postal Service says a number of those ballots were deposited in collection boxes too late to make the postmark deadline.

But Whittaker says he suspects the fault may not lie with all of those voters, as mishandled mail-in ballots and delayed deliveries plagued other primary elections in multiple states this year. And now, as early voting for the general elections begins, election officials around the country are raising concerns about whether the U.S. Postal Service can handle the influx of election mail expected this fall.

Last week, the National Association of State Election Directors and National Association of Secretaries of State issued a public letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that echoed a recent critical report by the Postal Service’s internal watchdog, the USPS Office of Inspector General.

“We saw things that we weren’t used to seeing in this primary cycle, and it felt like it was different,” says Mandy Vigil, New Mexico’s election director and the current president of NASED. “We’ve been raising these alarms [with the Postal Service] for the past year, but the lack of response and really being able to see any true change throughout that primary cycle made us feel like this was necessary, going public.”

While the Postal Service says it is working on improvements and committed to making timely deliveries, it is also recommending mail-in voters take what DeJoy has called “a common-sense measure” — return their paper voter registration forms, absentee ballot applications and completed ballots at least one week before their states’ respective deadlines.

“Let me be clear,” DeJoy said Thursday during a press briefing. “The Postal Service is ready to deliver the nation’s mail-in ballots.”

DeJoy, who was appointed to his role in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, pointed to the Postal Service’s performance during that contentious general election as proof.

“In a highly sensationalized environment and during a global pandemic, we were successful in 2020, delivering a historic volume of mail-in ballots. In the 2020 general election, we delivered 99.89% of ballots from voters to election officials within seven days,” DeJoy said. “We will be even better prepared for 2024 and will perform admirably again, as we always have.”

Why election officials and the USPS’ internal watchdog are concerned

The USPS inspector general’s office audited mail operations in 13 states and Puerto Rico during this year’s primary elections and found high on-time processing scores of more than 97% for election and political mail from December 2023 through March of this year.

But the internal watchdog’s July report says it also found Postal Service workers not always following the proper procedures for handling election mail, and spotted mailed ballots missing postmarks, which many state laws require for ballots to be counted and have become increasingly relevant as more voters cast their ballots by mail.

Individual ballots are at risk of not getting counted, the report warned, because of some existing USPS policies for processing mail, as well as operational changes related to the Postal Service’s controversial “Delivering for America” reorganization plan for addressing its financial woes.

The election officials’ letter highlighted similar concerns, noting that the USPS is marking election mail sent to voters as undeliverable at “higher than usual rates, even in cases where a voter is known not to have moved” — a decision that could disenfranchise eligible voters by depriving them of mail-in ballots and lead to the cancellation of eligible voters’ registration.

In some places, the letter adds, ballots that did make it through the mail delivery system arrived at election offices 10 or more days after the postmark date.

“It’s not these one-off instances that we are able to resolve at a lower level,” Vigil at NASED says. “The concern really has been the fact that we’re seeing a systemic issue, patterns that require the higher-ups to really take notice and make a change.”

DeJoy and other USPS leaders met with a group of election officials Wednesday after he said in a letter that the Postal Service is working on promptly addressing these issues. For example, USPS says it recently transitioned to web-based training that allows managers to confirm that all employees have received the required training and is making sure their facilities post work instructions.

Starting Oct. 21, about two weeks before Election Day, USPS is set to use what it calls the “extraordinary measures” policy that it usually deploys during general elections.

“These are designed to rescue ballots that are entered in our system likely or definitely too late to make election deadlines set by election officials,” DeJoy explained during Thursday’s press briefing. “We engage in heroic efforts intended to beat the clock. These efforts are designed to be used only when the risk of deviating from our standard processes is necessary to compensate for the ballot being mailed so close to a state’s deadline.”

That policy also includes specific instructions for Postal Service employees to place postmarks on mail-in ballots. “We try to postmark every piece of mail. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen,” Adrienne Marshall, director of election and government mail services, said last month during a press briefing, adding that voters can stop by a post office in person if they want to make sure their mail-in ballot gets a postmark.

Still, many election officials suspect there are structural issues in the Postal Service’s system that are driving ballot delivery issues.

“Making major operational changes days before a primary election could put ballots at risk,” the report by the inspector general’s office warned, noting that shortly before the last day of voting for Georgia and Virginia’s primary elections this year, the USPS opened a new regional processing and distribution center in Atlanta and changed its local transportation operations for the Richmond, Va., region.

After bipartisan pushback from Congress, the USPS backed down on rolling out planned changes at more processing centers, which are now postponed until January.

Asked by NPR why USPS does not have a policy of not making major operational changes during or close to elections, DeJoy noted that the Postal Service is “embarking on a major network change” and “there are elections every year and different requirements.”

“We also need to get on with our business because soon we will be in a situation [like] when I arrived here — about to run out of cash,” DeJoy added.

How some election officials and voters are changing their plans

Back in Utah’s Iron County, the business of those uncounted ballots for the June primary is still a mystery to Whittaker.

In a statement, USPS spokesperson John Hyatt says the Postal Service had collected “a number” of ballots in collection boxes and clustered mailboxes in the county the day after the state’s legal deadline for postmarks, adding that voters should check collection times posted on collection boxes.

But Whittaker says, after voters with rejected ballots told his office they put them in the mail days before the deadline, he wonders if this was a consequence of USPS deciding to redirect all of the Utah county’s mail to a processing center in Las Vegas, a two-and-a-half hour drive across state lines.

Still, Whittaker is trying to move forward by focusing on what he can control — messaging about the importance of returning ballots as soon as possible for the general election. “I don’t believe we’re going to be able to change the Postal Service, but we can work with what we’ve got,” Whittaker says.

In Alabama, where absentee voting kicked off last week, Julienne Pharrams, a student at the University of Alabama, who is registered to vote about two hours away in Elmore County, has come up with multiple plans for casting her ballot.

Plan A is to request a ballot by the end of this month and mail it back from campus in October.

“Because of the concerns with the U.S. Postal Service, my mom and I had a conversation, and if something goes wrong and it’s looking a little shaky in October, then she’s going to find a way to come to Tuscaloosa,” says Pharrams, adding that she’s prepared to drive back home with her mother so she can personally turn in her ballot.

On the southern end of the state, Marjorie Ewan, who’s registered to vote in Fairhope, Ala., says she plans to put her completed ballot in her building’s outgoing mail within 24 hours of finding it in her mailbox.

“I’m 81 years old, and I’m just not keen on standing in line at the polls,” Ewan says. “One of the packages that I’m waiting for is a cane to walk with, so I hope I don’t have to go to the post office because it’s quite a drive.”

For Kathy Jones, president of the League of Women Voters of Alabama, though, the plan is to deliver her absentee ballot in person. Delays in getting her mail delivered in Huntsville, Ala., have put her off from relying on the Postal Service to cast her vote.

“But some people have no choice,” Jones acknowledges. “They need to vote early.”

Edited by Benjamin Swasey