Post office creates division to focus on mail-in voting

The United States Postal Service is taking steps to avoid delays in procession absentee ballots which plagued the 2020 presidential election. The Election and Government Mail Services division will focus on handling election-related matters.

“We are fully committed to the secure and timely delivery of the nation’s election mail,” Adrienne Marshall, the executive director of the newly created division, said Wednesday.

The USPS processed more than 135 million ballots during the 2020 presidential election.

The Postal Service has faced funding issues over the last decade and a half since the passage of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2016, which forced the agency to fund its employees benefits and pension programs in advance to drive down the federal deficit.

The Postal Service hemorrhaged $62.4 billion from 2007 to 2016. The Inspector General at the time said $54.8 billion of that was due to prefunding of benefits.

Current Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said the USPS was in a “dire” situation when he took his post in 2020.

“When I joined the postal service in June of 2020, we were about three months into the pandemic and our financial situation was dire,” DeJoy said during an event at the American Enterprise Institute Wednesday. “We were forecasted to lose $20 billion in 2020 and potentially run out of cash in September of that year.”

DeJoy added the Post Service may need to shed 50,000 employees, as it attempts to consolidate its workforce, but the Postmaster General claimed there would still be net job gains at the agency.

“Right now, to get to break-even, I think we may need to get 50,000 people out of the organization. But that’s OK, because over the next two years, 200,000 people leave the organization for retirement. So we’re going to be a hiring organization,” he said.

DeJoy plans to take 500 processing facilities and whittle them down to 65 or 75 regional facilities.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.