On Christmas Eve, the U.S. Postal Service quietly clarified a rule that could determine whether your vote is counted.
For decades, the postmark, the official stamp showing when and where mail was processed, has been the gold standard for proving an absentee or mail-in ballot was submitted on time.
However, the Postal Service just clarified that since April, the number of mail truck visits to post offices far from Regional Processing and Distribution Centers has been cut in half, particularly affecting post offices in rural communities. This means your ballot might sit at the post office for days before it gets postmarked.
In the coming elections with strict postmark deadlines for voter ballots, that delay could be the difference between your vote counting and your voice being silenced.
I run a nonpartisan voter participation organization, and I’m alarmed. Not because of politics, but because of math.
The numbers tell a troubling story. According to the Brennan Center, state legislatures introduced 2,000 restrictive voting measures between 2021 and 2025, and 110 of those have become law. Just this year, six states passed seven new laws limiting mail-in voting. Ohio, Kansas, North Dakota and Utah have eliminated grace periods for mail-in ballot arrival entirely.
While 18 jurisdictions accept ballots after an election, they count them only if they’re postmarked by Election Day. That means even if you dropped off your ballot at the post office on Election Day, it could still be rejected if it isn’t postmarked that same day. These delays could also affect you if you register to vote or apply to vote by mail. All of these deadlines may be affected by the new postmark policy.
These policies are part of a larger pattern of voter suppression being perpetuated at the federal level. In March, President Trump signed an executive order mandating that voters provide proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, to register or update their voter registration. That same executive order also imposed stricter deadlines for mail-in ballots.
Meantime, the Justice Department is demanding that states turn over their voter rolls and is suing any states that refuse to comply. Thankfully, these policies have been the subject of lawsuits, and some have already been blocked by federal courts.
Nonetheless, the Trump administration’s willingness to interfere with an authority delegated solely to the states and Congress is alarming. Taken together, these actions signal the government is more focused on narrowly defining the right to vote than encouraging every eligible American to exercise it.
It’s hitting specific communities hardest. In 2024, voters of color, young people and unmarried women relied heavily on absentee and mail-in voting. These groups cast 1.1 million fewer votes in 2024 than in 2020. Turnout is already dropping. These new barriers will only accelerate the decline.
Rural voters also disproportionately bear the burden of these policies. With more than half of rural polling sites serving areas larger than 62 square miles, rural voters often must travel long distances to vote in person. Mail-in voting helps bridge that gap, but, with fewer mail truck visits to local post offices and stricter regulations on mail-in voting, rural voters increasingly risk being left behind in the electoral process.
Here’s the cruelest reality: The states passing the most restrictive voting laws are often the ones most affected by the postal policy. In Ohio, 77 percent of post offices are more than 50 miles from a regional processing facility. In Kansas and North Dakota, it’s over 90 percent. So voters in these states face the strictest ballot deadlines and the longest mail delays. It’s a perfect storm, intentionally or not, designed to disenfranchise.
The 2026 primaries are just months away. This will be the first real test of whether these compounding restrictions function as intended or whether they become what critics fear: structural barriers that determine not just how Americans vote but whether they can vote at all. The results won’t just shape the next election; they’ll reveal what kind of democracy we’ve become.