On Tuesday, the U. S. Postal Service ( USPS) scrapped a plan to reroute mail from Northern Nevada to a California-based processing center. Previous residents and legislators expressed concern that the plan might hinder mail-in ballot delivery on time.
According to the Associated Press, USPS stated in a statement that it has identified “improved efficiencies” that will allow the processing of single-piece email to remain at the current Reno post facility. The original plan was to implement the plan in the following year, which “meant that all mail from the Reno place would go through Sacramento before reaching its final location — yet from one side of the city to the other.”
According to Ned Jones, the USPS has been going through a reform since 2021 that aims to “achieve fiscal sustainability and support excellence.” One of the biggest shifts accompanying this reform is the combination of regional running centers,” which means that in some cases, ]mail-in ballots ] from one position are sent to a facility in a different, neighboring condition to be processed”.
Although officially effective at lowering costs, this approach has had negative effects for states like Nevada and Utah, which overwhelmingly elect their elections by email.
During the author’s June primaries, for example, practically 1, 200 voters in Southern Utah had their mail-in ballots discarded due to a speaking topic apparently stemming from the USPS’s control system. The ballots of these voters, who claimed to have received them by the state-mandated timeframe, were then rerouted to the company’s processing facility in Las Vegas, where they were then given a new postmark, according to local officials.
The Utah Supreme Court earlier this month rejected a constitutional challenge that sought to have these vote counted.
Gov. Joe Lombardo, R-Nev., responded positively to the USPS’s Tuesday announcement, calling it “great news for our state” and praising bipartisan efforts to “keep USPS operations in state and successfully protect] ] Nevadans from misguided D. C. bureaucracy”. Sens. Cisco Aguilar and the Nevada Secretary of State. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, all Liberals, also recently expressed concern about the now-formerly proposed plan.
Jeff DiPane, chairman of the Nevada-based Sun City Summerlin Conservatives Club, recently addressed The Federalist and advocated for Nevadans to cut off their absentee ballots in man or designate someone to do it for them.
Shawn Fleetwood is a student of the University of Mary Washington and a staff writer for The Federalist. He previously served as a condition content writer for Agreement of States Action and his work has been featured in various stores, including RealClearPolitics, RealClear Health, and Conservative Review. Following him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
