Did you read this post over at The Last Refuge/Conservative Treehouse yesterday?

The USPS has just created a division of NALC employees exclusively to handle mail-in voting,  just in time for the mid-term election.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States Postal Service is creating a division to handle election mail issues as part of an effort to ensure swift and secure delivery of ballots for the 2022 midterm election, officials said Wednesday.

The idea behind the creation of the Election and Government Mail Services is to have a permanent division dedicated to dealing with election matters, instead of handling issues one at a time as in the past.

Adrienne Marshall, executive director of the division, said Wednesday that the services will oversee “election mail strike teams” in every local and district community to address any problems that might arise.  “We are fully committed to the secure and timely delivery of the nation’s election mail,” she said.

This really caught my interest, because of my personal experience this week with an absentee ballot.

I requested an absentee ballot on line last week for the upcoming primary election. I was able to track it on line, and it was mailed to me promptly. That was confirmed by my daily USPS “Informed Delivery Daily Digest” email, in which was contained a photo of the mail piece that was to be delivered to me on Friday, July 22; it was postmarked July 20.

The ballot was not delivered, and since I also received my neighbor’s mail that day, I wasn’t too concerned. I did, nevertheless, report it to the USPS and waited a couple of days. No word. Then I telephoned my local City Clerk to report that the ballot was lost. He confirmed that it had not been returned as a completed ballot, sent me an emailed form that I filled out and signed stating that the ballot should be “spoiled”, which I faxed to him, and he mailed me another ballot. I received the replacement ballot. I will be returning it myself to the City Clerk.

Was my original absentee ballot stolen? Who knows. It certainly disappeared down a rat hole. The one that I did receive is the replacement ballot, which I confirmed by the postmark on the envelope (July 27).