Election Assistance Commission Vice Chair: Postal Service Can Handle Mail-In Ballots

The United States Postal Service (USPS) has the capacity to handle mail-in voting, said Election Assistance Commission Vice Chair Donald Palmer, offering his remarks on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Jerome Hudson.

Hudson asked, “Whatever the number or percentage of Americans who you believe will cast their ballot by mail, can the USPS currently handle whatever that volume is.?

Palmer replied, “The answer to that question is yes. It’s really not a volume issue. The issue really has to do with do Americans who decide to use both by mail or absentee, do they really understand that they need to start the process a bit earlier, that no matter what they do, there’s still going to be three-to-five day transmission within the postal service if they use the post office?”

Palmer said states and localities increasing their use of vote by mail and absentee experience “high rejection rates” of such ballots due to voters’ errors with their submissions due to unfamiliarity with the processes. “[Voters] make mistakes when they first start using voting by mail,” he explained. “They get it into the mail too late. They procrastinate. During the primaries, you saw heightened rejection rates of those ballots, sometimes five to ten percent, sometimes even 20 percent.”

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Rejection of ballots could degrade public trust in election integrity, Palmer warned. He stated, “A 20 percent rejection rate, or some fraud or perceived fraud out there, that’s going to really hit voter confidence. If 10 percent of 100 million voters were rejected for whatever late — too late, mistakes, no signature — and you said, ‘Well, we just had an election and so many votes were rejected,’ a lot of folks will say it wasn’t a legitimate election.”

The coronavirus outbreak will likely enhance mail-in and absentee voting, Palmer estimated.

Palmer noted that in-person voting “is much more secure” than alternative methods of voting.