U.S. Postal Service Failed to Properly Handle Some Ballots During This Year's Primary Elections, Audit Finds

September 10, 2026 · Jen Fifield

URL: https://www.propublica.org/article/postal-service-audit-primary-election-ballots

“There were no election-related training materials posted at 22 of 73 delivery units, or about 30%.”

USPS leads with the 99% on-time number and buries the rest. Management at 12% of facilities did not know how to postmark a ballot correctly, and that postmark is the entire legal basis for whether a vote counts in a lot of states. Thirty percent of delivery units had no election training posted at all. The failures land on voters who did everything right.