If you want to vote by mail please do so as soon as you can and consider dropping it off at the counter where they will postmark it right away.

Even then you have to request it. The term you need to ask for is "hand canceling". The USPS worker will take a handheld ink stamp and mark over the postage stamp with the received date. That letter is now "processed" as received by the post office.

They've cheated before, they'll do it again. It's like playing whack-a-mole trying to get around it.

This is also going to wreak havoc with documents sent for any purpose that may be litigated, or legal in nature.

If you don't know when it is going to be stamped, then you cannot possibly plan accordingly. Trying to be early to get around the unreliable time frame isn't planning accordingly, it is just guessing.

Right now, first class mail to homes in the Chicago area is taking two WEEKS to arrive due to holiday increases. I don't think it'd be this bad at tax or voting deadlines, but it's good to know what kind of variability you can expect, especially with all of the changes made to the US postal service since 2017.

Majorly affects anyone who mails their tax forms

This will make it easier for nefarious parties to just hold onto mail as long as possible before stamping it.

Transcription:

A post from bluesky stating "As of 12/24/25, USPS changed policy on when they postmark mail. Mail dropped off is no longer guaranteed a same-day postmark. Tax returns & other time-sensitive items are now stamped when they reach a regional processing center, which may be days later. Plan deadlines accordingly to avoid penalties." Another user commented on the post "this seems specifically designed to break mail-in voting (where deadlines are defined by postmark)".

They just need to ruin fucking everything.

This will affect rural mail the most. Every bit helps.

I wonder what % of ballots are going to get thrown out.

This is also making the mail less reliable. The mail is a vital piece of the functioning of the country but they want to privatize it

This isn't technically new, mail doesn't get a postmark stamp unless it's collected over the retail counter by clerks, and usually only on regular stamped mail (non-metered). If you had your mail in your mailbox with the flag up and is picked up by your carrier, it goes directly on the truck to the regional sorting facility and is processed and stamped there. Unless your mail comes directly from a regional sorting facility, it is not stamped at your local office if not handed in over the counter.

However, with election ballots, we are instructed to have them separate from other outgoing mail, regardless of when it's picked up to be kept in office and delivered to the town hall/voting location the following day. This is the case with all 3 offices I've worked at, in 2 different regional areas. Only exception is if they're absentee ballots for other towns.

Definitely drop a ballot off directly if you're cutting it close to election day to make absolutely sure it's counted in time though, and obviously, VOTE.

I had a whole comment that got eaten up in an error (and a Lemmy client that doesn't fail gracefully, I really should be moving off of Sync). But maybe that'll be an opportunity to give a more concise summary of what's going on.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/08/12/2025-15266/postmarks-and-postal-possession

This USPS notice is basically correct. The meaning of postmarks isn't changing: it's a mark that definitely proves that mail was in the Postal Service's possession on that date. The absence of a mark doesn't mean the absence of possession, and the date of a mark does not foreclose the possibility that the mail was in the Postal Service's possession on an earlier date.

It does note there are operational changes where they're now taking fewer trips in certain low volume zip codes, and that expands the number of places where postmarks are being applied on the next USPS operational day: usually the next day, but a second day if the next day is Sunday or a holiday, or a third day when the next day is a Sunday and the day after that is a Monday holiday.

Someone mailing something may still request a same-day postmark from the postal facility they're dropping it off at, but that's not helpful if they're already past business hours or using an unattended outgoing mail box.

Most importantly, though, it only has a small potential to affect voting.

• Most states require ballots to be received by election day, and postmark day doesn't matter.
• Even in states that look to postmarks, they still have a deadline to be received by a particular grace period, so you'll want to get the mail sent as early as possible anyway.
• The Supreme Court just heard a case, and will rule by June, on whether states are even allowed to follow the postmark date instead of the received by date.
• Election Day is on a Tuesday not near a holiday. So the operational changes will only add a single day to the postmark date, in the low population areas that don't deal with a lot of mail, for people who don't request a same day postmark from the post office.

Jesus Christ.. More bullshit conservative nonsense?? Come on.

Interesting that this is even relevant in the US.

Here in Germany the only relevant metric is whether a document has arrived at the recipient before any given deadline, from ballots to legal documents. It is considered your responsibility to ensure sending anything sufficiently early.

Here in Colorado we vote by mail, in person or, relevant to this development, we are allowed to drop a ballot into an actual ballot container. It's like a mailbox but only unlocked during elections.

Great for suburbanites like me but in rural districts might be a bit of a hike.

Election jurisdictions that accept ballots postmarked by Election Day but received after will face challenges, as the postmark date may reflect processing date rather than the date the ballot entered USPS possession.

They'll just rely on delayed processing, or actively delay the processing.

Anything to reduce democracy.

everyone here is talking about elections, I'm thinking about taxes and time-sensitive forms. Hell, the company I work at accepts time-sensitive forms, we're now gonna have to discuss this in a meeting to see how we're gonna handle forms that come by mail after our deadline.

Like dejoy would do something like that …. Oh wait. Yes. Yes he would do something like that to appease daddy Trump and president musk.

I predict the regional processing centres in blue states will have technical issues for weeks before and after the voting period.

It's not a secret. Just nobody in any leadership position seems willing/able to do anything about it

The funny thing is they think Democrats are more using the mailing system. I'm pretty sure it's all of the older Republicans and Republicans in general that use the mail-in system far more. This is only going to hurt their base even more.