This is a Civics 101 story from CNY Decides, a collaborative podcast between the award winning newsrooms of WAER and Central Current.
The Recent changes to the United States Postal Service’s logistics and postmarking rules are expected to impact mail-in voting and may affect the 2026 midterm elections in Central New York and the entire country.
About one-third of Americans have relied on mail-in voting in recent elections according to the States United Democracy Center. Recently, a Regional Transit Optimization (RTO) plan implemented by the federal government centralized processing to limited metropolitan areas. By removing smaller community centers, and instituting new postmarking, first class mail is no longer marked on the day it is sent.
In 2025, the USPS started to implement the RTO plan. The initiative reduced twice daily services to once a day delivery for zip-codes further than a 50-mile radius of a Regional Possession and Distribution Center (RPDC). Even though mail procession operations still happen in Syracuse, operations are slowly transitioning to the closest RPDC in Rochester. In a USPS fact sheet the plan is explained as part of "operational improvements" meant to improve service and reduce costs. That has received criticism from the Postal Regulation Commission for cutting service and slowing down delivery times for rural areas.
“Essentially, what's happening is they've delayed the night mail collections at least one day," said Tom Dlugolenski, the President of National Association of Letter Carriers branch 134. That is accounting for business day deliveries, "over the course of weekends and holidays, it could be two, three, or four days,” he added.
The RTO is not the only change to the postal service that could impact elections. Starting Christmas Eve of 2025, USPS changed its postmarking rules on mail parcels. Now, mail is postmarked at USPS facilities instead of the point when it is put in the mailbox. According to the USPS, mail is now automatically processed by machines at a RDPS or certain Local Processing Centers (LPC), unless it is canceled or if a customer requests a manual postmark at their local post office. It is currently unknown whether the LPC in Syracuse currently postmarks mail. The Onondaga County’s Electoral Commissioner sees trouble ahead under New York's laws requiring mail-in ballots arrive not later than midnight on election day.
“The decision to not put a postmark affix to the mail until it gets to the regional office is something that could hurt ballots that are late," said Commissioner Dustin Czarny, "because if it's not postmarked by election day, we can't make it valid.”
Despite concerns, there is mixed statistical evidence on whether those changes are making a crucial difference in the delivery speed of mail.
According to the Postal Regulatory Commission, the time it takes to deliver a single-piece first class letter has increased from 3-4 days to five during the last fiscal year. The USPS’ national on-time delivery rate, which according to the postal service measures time from “USPS acceptance to delivery”, went down from 86.47% in FY 2024 to 86.15% in FY 2025.
However, the on time percentage is now up to 87.27% in FY 2026 as of April 9.
Right: On-time performance vs target per year
Changes in the post office may not be the only thing that could affect mail-in voting in the midterms. President Trump and congressional Republicans have discussed requiring that voters provide a document proving citizenship when they fill out mail-in ballot applications as a part of the SAVE Act. Additionally, the Supreme Court is hearing the case Watson v Republican National Committee, which will decide whether Mississippi can count ballots delivered up to five days after the election deadline postmark.