The Postmark Trap

Louis DeJoy Is Gone, But His Final Policy Could Invalidate Your Next Ballot

Holeeeee shit.

Remember when everyone was worried about Louis DeJoy taking over the postal service during Trump’s first term? Well, Republicans aren’t great at much - but they are masters of the long game.

On December 24th, while most of us were wrapping presents or arguing about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, the United States Postal Service quietly changed how postmarks work. Not the delivery times. Not the prices. The date itself. The one printed on your envelope that proves when you mailed something.

Under the new rule, USPS no longer stamps mail when they receive it. Instead, the “official” postmark date is now whenever your envelope first hits an automated sorting machine at a regional processing center. That center might be 50 miles away. It might be 200. Your mail might sit in a truck for a day or two before it gets there. Drop something in your local mailbox on Tuesday, get a Thursday postmark. The postal service admits the date is no longer a “perfectly reliable indicator” of when they actually took possession.

For birthday cards, this is an inconvenience. For ballots, it’s a disaster.

Sixteen states accept mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive afterward. California gives you a week after the election. Washington gives you nearly three. Nevada, Illinois, New Jersey, and others have similar grace periods. These laws exist because states recognize a basic reality: if you put a ballot in the mail on time, you shouldn’t be disenfranchised because the postal service was slow. The postmark was proof you did your part.

Now that proof is meaningless.

Here’s how it works: Louis DeJoy’s “Delivering for America” plan consolidated mail processing into massive regional hubs. Fewer trucks run between local post offices and these centers. Mail gets batched. Under his Regional Transportation Optimization initiative, post offices more than 50 miles from a hub only get one pickup per day. The Postal Regulatory Commission warned in January that this would cause “significant negative impacts on rural communities throughout the United States.” They weren’t speculating. They studied it.

DeJoy pushed the plan through anyway. He resigned in March 2025, after mail usage dropped 12% on his watch and on-time delivery for three-to-five day mail fell to 66.8% nationally. In some regions, it hit 45%. But the infrastructure he built remains. So do the policies.

The new postmark rule formalizes what was already happening. USPS stopped reliably stamping mail at local facilities years ago. The December rule just made it official and disclaimed responsibility. There’s a remarkable sentence buried in the Federal Register notice: USPS acknowledges that other entities have “infused the postmark with their own meanings” and calls that reliance “misplaced.” Translation: if you thought the postmark proved when you mailed something, that’s on you. They never promised that.

Except they did. For decades. The entire legal framework around tax deadlines, court filings, and election laws was built on that assumption.

Now check out the timeline - this took effect six days before the December 31st tax and charitable giving deadline, creating immediate chaos for anyone mailing year-end donations or tax documents. It landed during the holiday week when news coverage is minimal and most Americans are focused on family.

And it was implemented more than a year after the 2024 election and nearly two years before the 2026 midterms, ensuring that by the time voters feel its impact at the ballot box, the policy will be treated as settled procedure rather than a controversial change worth scrutinizing.

Nobody voted on this. Nobody campaigned on it. It just happened, buried in bureaucratic procedure, signed off by a postmaster general who’s already gone.

The operational problems were visible long before the rule made them official.

During the 2024 election, Washington State officials warned voters not to mail ballots after October 30th. California’s Attorney General told residents more than 50 miles from a processing facility to skip the mailbox entirely on Election Day.

These officials saw the delays DeJoy’s consolidation was causing. They couldn’t stop it. They could only tell people to work around it.

But working around it isn’t simple. USPS says you can still get a same-day postmark by visiting a post office counter and specifically requesting a manual stamp. During business hours. In person. For elderly voters, disabled voters, rural voters without reliable transportation, or anyone working multiple jobs, this isn’t a solution.

And it’s about to get worse. The Supreme Court just agreed to hear Watson v. Republican National Committee, a case that could eliminate postmark deadlines nationwide. The RNC sued Mississippi, arguing that counting ballots postmarked by Election Day but received afterward violates federal law. The Fifth Circuit agreed. If the Supreme Court follows suit, those 725,000 voters who cast timely ballots in 2024 and had them counted under grace periods would have been out of luck. Three states have already eliminated their postmark grace periods in anticipation of the ruling. Ohio’s Secretary of State testified that the Department of Justice threatened to sue over their current policy. More will follow.

So the trap works like this: first, make postmarks unreliable by changing when they’re applied. Then, make them legally irrelevant by eliminating postmark deadlines altogether. The voters caught in the middle are disproportionately rural, elderly, and working-class - the same people who have the hardest time getting to a post office counter during business hours to request a service most don’t know exists.

None of this will be called voter suppression. It will be called modernization. Efficiency. Cost savings. Federal law compliance. The outcome will be identical: votes cast on time, thrown out because an envelope sat too long in a sorting facility controlled by policies implemented by a postmaster general who left office nine months ago.

The craziest thing about all of this is Republicans refuse to just call this what it is - voter suppression. Because they KNOW - the only way that they can win is through technicalities like this - oh - and the electoral college.

DeJoy is gone. His DOGE agreement with Elon Musk’s team remains. His consolidated network remains. His Regional Transportation Optimization remains. And now his postmark policy is codified in the Domestic Mail Manual, affecting every American who assumed the date on their envelope meant what it said.

The 2026 midterms are less than a year away. By then, this will be old news. That’s the whole point.

#ratcclips

SOURCES

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/11/24/2025-20740/postmarks-and-postal-possession

https://www.npr.org/2025/10/23/nx-s1-5582370/mail-in-ballot-postmark

https://votingrightslab.org/2025/11/10/the-markup-supreme-court-takes-up-challenge-to-state-postmark-deadlines-for-mail-ballots/

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2025/10/usps-regulators-chairman-who-challenged-sweeping-changes-under-dejoy-is-stepping-down/

https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2025/12/23/what-will-supreme-courts-mail-in/

https://www.currentfederaltaxdevelopments.com/blog/2025/12/8/usps-changes-to-postmark-date-system-taking-effect-december-24-2025

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/state-officials-warn-usps-policies-risk-uncounted-ballots/281-36fe86c9-baa7-46dc-92aa-390f0cc1e234

https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-presses-postmaster-general-to-withdraw-detrimental-rural-delivery-proposal/​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​