Poll: Trust in the U.S. Postal Service delivering mail-in ballots on time has fallen

A U.S. Postal Service employee pushes a cart outside a post office in Wheeling, Ill., in 2021. Nam Y. Huh/AP hide caption

The U.S. Postal Service is losing more of the public's trust that it will deliver mail-in ballots on time, a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll finds.

While the majority of registered voters still say they feel confident or very confident about timely USPS deliveries of election mail to voters and election officials, that share dropped 13 percentage points over the past two years — from 71% in 2024 to 58% this year. Trust in the Postal Service's on-time delivery of election mail has returned to levels last seen in the fall of 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new survey finding comes shortly after a Supreme Court ruling blocked the Trump administration from using the mailing agency to restrict voting by mail for the midterm elections.

That decision came on Sept. 14; this national poll of 1,280 voters was conducted Sept. 14 to 15 in English and Spanish. It has a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points, meaning results could be about 4 points higher or lower.

Following the ruling, USPS is expected to keep delivering election mail as originally planned, including putting in place its "extraordinary measures" policy for speeding up the delivery of general-election ballots beginning a week before Election Day.

In a statement, USPS says it delivered more than 233 million pieces of election mail this fiscal year through the end of August, with an on-time score of 97.94%.

"There has been a lot of misinformation recently about the Postal Service's role in the electoral process, which may have had an impact on public sentiment. But the Postal Service's actual performance metrics speak for themselves," the statement says. "Postal employees take great pride in their responsibility to support the democratic process."