How a USPS rule change could impact election ballots in 2026 |
It’s the sort of thing you might not notice until it really matters, but the U.S. Postal Service recently changed how it defines the “postmark” on a piece of mail—warning that the postmark date is not a reliable indicator of when you actually mailed something.
If you’re the sort of person who waits until the last minute to send time-sensitive mail, that means you’ll need to stand in line at your local post office and request a manual postmark when dropping off your mail.
While the way mail is postmarked hasn’t undergone some major shift recently, the postal service set out earlier this year to clarify earlier what a postmark means and how the process works.
By clarifying, the beleaguered agency delivered a reality check of sorts—and warned that an issue many people didn’t even realize was an issue could become more common under an initiative it’s implemented to optimize mail delivery, and particularly in rural areas, as part of its “