Evening collections end in Oregon and Washington: The threat to election mail and other risks

Last week the Postal Service stopped collecting mail and packages at the end of the day at 170 post offices in Oregon and 30 in southern Washington.

The initiative is called Local Transportation Optimization (LTO), aka Optimized Collections. Without the traditional end-of-day collection and transport to the processing center, the mail sits overnight at the post office, waiting to be picked up the next morning, when the day’s mail is dropped off for carrier delivery and PO box distribution.