The Center for Election Confidence (CEC) today submitted a comment to the U.S. Postal Service, urging the USPS to meet its public duty by continuing to postmark ballots and other mail, just as it has done for hundreds of years. CEC filed its comment in response to the USPS’s Proposed Rule, “Postmarks and Postal Possession” (90 F.R. 38716), which would see the USPS abdicate its duty to place postmarks on much of its processing volume, including ballots transmitted by mail.

As CEC notes in its comment, postmarking is neither a new phenomenon nor intended solely for the benefit of the Postal Service’s internal processes:

Predating postal stamps by nearly 200 years, the first postmark was issued in 1661 by England’s first postmaster general, Henry Bishop, so that every letter would show “the day of the moneth that every letter comes to the office, so that no Letter Carryer may dare detayne a letter from post to post; which before was usual.”1 That first postmark was made centuries ago for the express benefit of those who used the mails; today, governments, civil society, and the general public continue to rely on the modern USPS to execute its age-old duty to place postmarks.

Yet, with this Proposed Rule, the USPS attempts to rewrite history to relieve itself of the burden of this important public duty.

[T]he USPS has a duty to place postmarks for the benefit of third parties as it and its predecessor organizations have for centuries. Indeed, postmarks are not—and as Postmaster Bishop noted, have never been—simply an internal postal process but rather represent a key requirement of the mission of the Postal Service. The history of the creation of the postmark for the benefit of the public and the public’s widely accepted reliance on the postmark underscores an implied-but-effective burden—and in the case of the statutory and regulatory references described below, an actual burden—on the Postal Service to make best efforts to place postmarks upon mail pieces as it always has.

While the USPS claims that postmarks have reduced usefulness today because of changes in mail processing, CEC notes that “the general public has long recognized that a postmark is not applied exactly when a piece of mail is deposited with the postal service”, highlighting the importance of a postmark’s status as “the best evidence of a date of mailing” that “need not be perfect evidence to achieve its goals.”

Further, CEC highlights that third-party reliance on postmarks underpin the operations of both government and civil society, with important functions such as electing leadership, collecting taxes, and deciding cases or controversies, as well as day-to-day commerce, depending heavily on the reliable, accurate, and efficient processing of mail. Even the USPS relies on its postmarks to “verify[] the date on which a document was mailed”!

Postmarks have been relied upon by governments, courts, litigants, and all manner of third parties to best discern the date and location of mailing for over 350 years. Now after centuries of postmarks, the USPS’s Proposed Rule seeks to abdicate this responsibility—long recognized by federal statute, agency regulation, and case law as a vital public duty of the United States Postal Service—to postmark all mail deposited with the USPS consistently, accurately, and reliably for the benefit of the sender, recipient, and any interested third party. Rather than adopt the Proposed Rule, the USPS should fulfill its vital role in civil society and self-government by placing postmarks consistently, reliably, and accurately for the benefit of the public.

CEC notes that ballots transmitted through the mail should not “require special care but rather simply the consistent, reliable, and accurate execution of the Postal Service’s standard duty of care with respect to placing postmarks for the benefit of third parties.” For years, this standard duty of care expressly included Election Mail, with USPS policy holding that “every completed ballot mailed by voters [must] receive a postmark.”

No Proposed Rule is needed. All CEC asks is for the U.S. Postal Service to meet its existing, centuries-old standard duty of care by placing postmarks on the mail it processes, including ballots transmitted by mail—nothing more.