Due to the USPS’s efforts to improve efficiency and reduce costs, it’s now more likely that your mail will be postmarked once it’s at a processing facility, at least a day after it’s collected.
This has big implications for mail ballots, especially for rural voters. Nevada, Texas, and New York are among the 14 states that allow mail ballots to be counted for a certain period after the election, as long as they’re postmarked by election day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said there are solutions – and the pressure is on to find one before the June primary.
“You just put an Apple tag on every mail ballot, and you know where it is at all times, and we can just go online and see when it came into possession. But again, that’s not practical. It’s not cheap,” Aguilar said.
Aguilar said that if voters want to wait until Election Day to mail their ballots, he could encourage them to use drop boxes, but that would increase the counties’ processing time.
The USPS’s long-standing official guidance is to send mail ballots at least one week in advance. Aguilar said it’s too premature for the state to cosign the recommendation.
“I could understand a voter’s desire to want to wait closer to election day because campaigns are competitive,” Aguilar said. “You learn new information about the candidate, you learn new information about the issues, and you want to make sure that the vote you're casting is really representative of what your views are and it's impactful. It determines the future of our state.”
In an email to KUNR, a postal service spokesperson said that postmarks were never intended to reflect when mail ballots were collected. Voters could obtain a hand-stamped postmark by going into a post office and requesting one. The spokesperson said the agency does not anticipate a surge requiring additional staff, but will monitor the situation during the election.
However, at the end of the day, this might not matter anyway. The U.S. Supreme Court could decide this year whether states can accept mail ballots postmarked by Election Day that are received afterward.
