For this year’s peak mailing season, which began last month and runs through January, the U.S. Postal Service decided to hire fewer temporary employees and lease less temporary space to handle the increased volume than it did last year. Seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it?
Given the significant role mailed ballots played during the 2020 general election — about half of all votes traveled through the U.S. Postal Service network — and the increased attention focused on voting by mail, we assessed the Postal Service’s readiness for the upcoming November mid-term elections.
The thought of mail traveling by rail conjures up a picture of railway mail clerks sorting letters as a train rolls along into the night. Traditional railway mail service ended long ago, fading away as the use of passenger rail diminished and new methods of sorting mail by machine arose. The last run of a Railway Post Office was in 1977.
