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by TMWNN·6y ago·view on hn ↗
No. Two extra letters per household (one ballot, then one returned ballot), largely spread out over days or weeks, is just not that much more volume for the USPS. That's of course the maximum; in practice the average per household will be much lower than that. Further, as stated elsewhere, non-package mail volume has collapsed because of COVID19.

What does matter is the backend, the infrastructure for counties and states that previously did not use mail ballots, or only used them for absentee voting, to a) properly send them out to the right recipients, then b) accept and process them. All this a) of course has to be done by early October to give voters a month before election day, and b) has nothing to do with the USPS.

1 comments
I think you make a good point, but little nitpick, many (most?) households have more than one adult.
Multiply the junk mail by the same number of adults.

I used to get a couple a day (mass-mailed banking/internet/etc advertisements), but it seems to have tapered off with the pandemic.

True. But my larger point is that even aside from the current drop in overall USPS non-package volume, the USPS has a lot of experience in handling lots of mail. Think of every adult in every household receiving tax documents from the IRS and every employer, bank, and other financial company in January, then many/most of those same adults mailing tax returns to the IRS and state tax agencies by April 15.