Voters should send their ballots back to their elections offices by Tuesday, the U.S. Postal Service is warning, particularly for those in states that must receive the ballots by Election Day.
USPS issued the advice to give the mail system a week to process ballots despite the agency so far sorting and delivering election mail quickly and on time. Sending ballots in by Oct. 29 would virtually eliminate any risk of them arriving late, however, as the Postal Service has so far this month delivered 99.9% of ballots on time.
Voters who opt not to send their ballots by Tuesday will still have some wiggle room to get them to election offices on time. Through the first three weeks of October, ballots going from voters to election officials were delivered in just one day on average. That occurred before USPS began taking its special election season steps to expedite election mail processing last week.