Michigan election officials tell voters to drop off ballots, not mail them

Just a day away from Michigan’s primary election, officials are concerned that the United States Postal Service may not deliver some voters' absentee ballots on time.

Birmingham City Clerk Alexandria Bingham told residents to drop their absentee ballot in person rather than rely on the mail, the Detroit Free Press reported .

"We don’t want that to be the one ballot that gets into a bind somewhere in the system," Bingham said.

Ever since Louis DeJoy was appointed postmaster general of the USPS in 2020, he’s faced scrutiny for his efforts to revamp the postal system.

While DeJoy continues to hike stamp prices and shipping costs, the USPS reported losing $2.1 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2024, more than double the net loss in the same time period last year. However, the USPS says its projected losses for the decade fell from $160 billion to $70 billion.

In March 2021, DeJoy launched a ten-year plan to modernize the USPS and create regional processing and distribution centers. However, the plan is failing to see the cost savings it estimated, and some are arguing it's actually making the postal service worse.

Back in May, Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) led 25 other senators in calling on DeJoy to put a pause on his plan, citing concerns about a decline in on-time delivery.

“We are concerned about the impacts these changes have had so far, and the potential impacts that further changes could have,” the senators wrote. “In regions where USPS has implemented significant changes, on-time mail delivery has declined. In addition, it is not clear these changes will improve efficiency or costs. Despite these concerns, USPS has moved forward with announcing and approving additional facility changes across the country.”

Peters has also raised concerns about the “degraded rural service” and “delayed delivery of election mail.”

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"The postal service is aware of some past intermittent delays in Michigan and has worked to stabilize service performance there," agency spokesman Tim Norman told the outlet, emphasizing that "in Detroit and Michigan, mail is currently being delivered within postal service performance standards."

As of July 10, more than 1.5 million Michigan voters requested an absentee ballot ahead of the Aug. 6 primary. That’s 157,833 more than had requested an absentee ballot at the same point prior to the 2020 August primary.