New York Times: The rate at which mail votes have been rejected for arriving late has ticked up in primaries this year and general elections last year in roughly a dozen states, prompting election officials to worry that the U.S. Postal Service is ill-equipped to deliver ballots in the fall midterms.

The states studied by The New York Times include some of the most critical battleground House and Senate seats where control of Congress will be determined, as well as key races for governor and secretary of state. The Times obtained data from California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.

In Wisconsin, which hosts an open race for governor, a competitive House election plus contests for both chambers of the state legislature, lateness accounted for about 5,000 rejected mail ballots in the spring primary this year, or 78 percent of all tossed ballots. During the last spring election, in 2023, the figure was roughly 2,300, or 47 percent of all tossed votes.

The increase is particularly striking when comparing primaries in 2024 and this year. In Michigan’s primary earlier this month, more than 10,000 mail ballots were rejected for arriving after the state’s deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day. That is nearly double the number of ballots rejected in 2024. In Washington, the number of late-arriving mail ballots increased from about 16,000 to more than 20,000 in the same period.

The rise in rejected ballots comes at a time of immense upheaval at the Postal Service, where a budget crisis has prompted widespread complaints about delivery delays. The increase also comes as President Trump and his allies are trying to transform the 251-year-old agency into a central player in their quest to restrict mail voting and otherwise overhaul the nation’s elections.

Roughly two dozen states sued the government over the president’s executive order governing mail voting, which would require states to hand over voter information and would empower the Postal Service to block mail ballots from being sent or delivered in states that do not comply. The moves have especially alarmed Democrats, who fear the president could use the Postal Service to tip the scales of a midterm election that polls show currently favors their party. Mr. Trump has stated publicly that curtailing mail voting is good for Republicans.

A federal judge issued a ruling on Thursday blocking the Postal Service from proceeding after concluding that the agency’s plan appeared to overstep its legal mandate and could spark chaos by changing rules fewer than 70 days before an election. The administration is appealing.

Meanwhile, the uptick in rejection rates for mail ballots this year could fuel the partisan battle. The ballots that were tossed because they arrived too late represent a fraction of the overall mail ballot total — the Postal Service typically delivers more than 95 percent of mail ballots on time. But the agency has curtailed its services in the face of budget shortfalls in recent years, leading to slower mail delivery across the country.

Election officials say the rise in rejections, along with the general sentiment out of Washington, have prompted them to scramble to put safeguards in place to ensure that voters’ ballots are counted.

In Colorado, Jena Griswold, the Democratic secretary of state, has rapidly increased the number of drop boxes across the state — by 78 percent since 2018 — so voters can return their ballots without concerns of postal delays or interference.

Read more: More Mail Ballots Are Arriving Late This Year, and They’re Getting Tossed – The New York Times