TOPEKA, Kan. — The U.S. Postal Service has reopened all of its mail processing centers in areas of Florida and North Carolina hit by recent hurricanes, a top official said Wednesday in a briefing meant to reassure voters and election officials that the agency is ready to handle mail ballots.
The Postal Service held the virtual meeting less than two weeks before the Nov. 5 election and six weeks after state and local election officials warned that problems with mail service threatened to disenfranchise voters. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy later responded that the Postal Service makes “heroic efforts” to get even ballots mailed late to election offices on time.
Even after Hurricane Helene in late September and Hurricane Milton this month, 99.9% of the nation’s election-related mail was delivered within seven days, the Postal Service reported Wednesday. It said 99.7% of the election-related mail was delivered within three days for the last presidential election in 2020.
“We have the capacity to handle a high volume of election mail in the final weeks of the election,” said Steven Monteith, a Postal Service executive vice president and its chief marketing officer.
Monteith said all the processing centers in North Carolina were back in operation as of Tuesday., as were all of Florida’s centers. He said mail can be delivered to all but 4,600 addresses in North Carolina and about 600 in Florida.
It’s not clear how many voters in the hardest-hit areas will return their ballots by mail. Early in-person voting has gotten off to a strong start in North Carolina, where election officials have taken a number of steps to make voting as accessible as possible for voters affected by the storms. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has extended early voting to Election Day for certain counties and modified deadlines for election supervisors to send out mail ballots.
As of Tuesday, the Postal Service had moved retail sites in eight communities and brought mobile units into another 13 in western North Carolina. It moved 10 retail sites in the Tampa-St. Petersburg metropolitan area and another three in and around Fort Myers.
Monteith said a “full recovery” of mail service from the hurricanes “may stretch forward for some time” but that people still can pick up mail at post offices or mobile units. He said mail that had been undelivered because of the hurricanes is being moved to them.
“The nation’s postal network is operating effectively without any major reported disruptions,” Monteith said.
Postal Service officials are advising voters to mail their ballots at least seven days in advance.