Recent changes to the Postal Service’s Domestic Mail Manual (DMM), which sets out mailing policies and standards, have caused concern regarding postmarking practices.
While USPS has updated the DMM to clarify its practices, it is important to note that nothing about its postmarking procedures has changed.
Nonetheless, the changes to the DMM underscore a major concern of the APWU’s — the Postal Service has slowed the transportation and delivery of First Class Mail significantly, with two extensions of service standards since 2021. This is likely to have a negative impact on Election Mail in federal and state elections.
The most recent service standard reduction in April 2025 was largely driven by an operational initiative called Regional Transportation Optimization (RTO). For much of the country, RTO ends the Postal Service’s practice of picking up all mail collected at post offices, blue boxes and by letter carriers at the end of each day. Before RTO, this mail was transported to a processing facility just hours after leaving a customer’s hands, where it would be postmarked and moved along the processing network.
Since RTO, much of the country’s mail is not processed until the morning after, or as in the case of mail dropped off at the end of the week or before a holiday, several days after, it was first dropped off by customers.
This gap between when a customer drops off mail and when the USPS postmarks an item is cause for concern for time-sensitive correspondence, especially Election Mail. Additionally, with the elimination of the afternoon pickup, much of the country’s First Class Mail now takes a day longer to transport and deliver than before.
The APWU opposed the service standard reductions in 2021 and 2025, and has urged the Postal Service to rethink RTO and communicate clearly to the public, and election officials in particular, its process and timeline for postmarking mail. And, in an effort to ensure the continued success of Election Mail, the APWU urges the Postal Service to fully engage its “extraordinary measures” this election year, and to work proactively with the APWU and other postal unions in the Election Mail Task Force.
