The US Postal Service has advised 46 states and the District of Columbia that it may not be able to process and deliver ballots to election boards within the timeframes required for those votes to count, effectively disenfranchising voters, the Washington Post reports.
Only Rhode Island, New Mexico, Nevada and Oregon did not receive the notifications. Four states that conduct their elections entirely via mail–Colorado, Utah, Washington and Hawaii–received the advisory from the USPS.
The notifications have prompted some states to consider changing the deadlines for mailing in ballots, either pushing up the date a mail-in ballot must be postmarked or pushing back the dates the ballot must be received by the election authority.
According to The Post, the ballot warnings, issued at the end of July from Thomas J. Marshall, general counsel and executive vice president of the Postal Service, and obtained through a records request by The Post, were planned before the appointment of Louis DeJoy, a former logistics executive, ally and funder of President Trump, as postmaster general in early summer.
The notification of the slowdown is furthering accusations that Trump is attempting to politicizing the Postal Service to discredit mail-in voting at the time of a pandemic when many people will not want to gather in polling places.