On Thursday, Senator Gary Peters (D-Michigan), the ranking member on the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee which has oversight of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), announced the launching of an investigation into reported delays at the USPS that are preventing Americans from receiving critical mail on-time, including prescription drugs, business mail, and mail-in ballots.The USPS has recently begun an “operation pivot” under the leadership of Louis DeJoy, a former logistics executive who took office in July. The new policies bar postal employees from working overtime, a crucial method of resolving staffing shortages during the coronavirus pandemic and instructs workers to leave mail behind at post offices and processing plants if they run late.

As states look to dramatically expand the use of mail-in ballots this fall, postal workers across the country have expressed their concerns that the changes could lead to chaos in November. Already, tens of thousands of ballots across the country have been disqualified in this year’s primaries, many because they did not arrive on time. Election officials and voters are increasingly reporting long waits for the delivery of absentee ballots as states hold primaries. Postal workers have also been inundated with package volumes that exceed Christmastime levels in many areas of the country due to robust online shopping spurred by the pandemic. Election experts have called for the USPS to roll back the recent changes, saying they could erode voter trust in mail voting, or lead to ballots going uncounted because of backlogs.