On Tuesday, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) scrapped a plan to reroute mail from Northern Nevada to a California-based processing center. Lawmakers and grassroots activists previously expressed concern the policy could jeopardize on-time arrival of mail-in ballots.
According to the Associated Press, “USPS said in a statement it has identified ‘enhanced efficiencies’ that will allow processing of single-piece mail to continue at the existing Reno postal facility.” The policy — which was originally set to take effect next year — would have “meant that all mail sent from the Reno area would pass through Sacramento before reaching its final destination — even from one side of the city to the other.”
As Ned Jones previously wrote in these pages, the USPS has been undergoing a restructuring since 2021 that seeks to “achieve financial sustainability and service excellence.” One of the biggest changes accompanying this overhaul is the consolidation of regional processing centers, “which means that in some cases, [mail-in ballots] from one state are sent to a center in a different, neighboring state to be processed.”
While reportedly effective at reducing costs, this policy has produced its negatives for states like Nevada and Utah, which predominantly conduct their elections by mail.
During the latter’s June primaries, for instance, nearly 1,200 voters in Southern Utah had their mail-in ballots discarded due to a postmark issue reportedly stemming from the USPS’s processing system. Local officials theorized that the ballots of these voters — who claimed to have mailed them in by the state-mandated deadline — were rerouted to the agency’s processing center in Las Vegas and subsequently received a new postmark.
A legal challenge attempting to have these ballots counted was dismissed by the Utah Supreme Court earlier this month.
Gov. Joe Lombardo, R-Nev., responded positively to the USPS’s Tuesday announcement, calling it “great news for our state” and praising bipartisan efforts to “keep USPS operations in state and successfully protect[] Nevadans from misguided D.C. bureaucracy.” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar and Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, all Democrats, also previously expressed concern about the now-formerly proposed plan.
While previously speaking with The Federalist, Jeff DiPane, president of the Nevada-based Sun City Summerlin Conservatives Club, said the fallout from the USPS’s restructuring demonstrates the pitfalls of mail-in voting and encouraged Nevadans to drop off their absentee ballots in person or designate someone they trust to do it for them.
