The United States Postal Service (USPS) has recently updated its postmark rules. As of December 2025, instead of mail being postmarked the day it was sent, the postmark will reflect when that piece of mail was processed by an “automated USPS sorting machine,” which means that some mail could be postmarked days after it was sent. It is still possible to request a postmark to be added the same day if the mail is dropped off in-person.
USPS has announced that they “have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mail pieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed. This means that the date on the postmarks applied at our processing facilities will not necessarily match the date on which the customer’s mail piece was collected by a letter carrier or dropped off at a retail location.”
This is far more serious than some may think. It is common practice for postmarks to be used as a form of verification to determine when physical mail items like bills, tax documents/payments, and legal filings were sent. Under these new rules, Americans may now be subject to late fees or penalties if postmarks do not match due dates.
This rule change will also impact mail-in ballots. Nearly one-third of Americans vote by mail, and many states accept mail-in ballots as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. People who drop their ballots off on Election Day would now risk not having their vote count under these new rules.
Democratic lawmakers are also alarmed by this change. In a letter to the USPS Postmaster General David Steiner, US Senators Jeff Merkley and Alex Padilla wrote, “We should be working to make voting easier for eligible voters, not harder. These changes will only increase the likelihood of voter disenfranchisement. While voters can request a manual postmark at a post office, this is unrealistic for millions of voters who vote by mail and will only serve to discourage mail voting.”
USPS’s response was “customers have used postmarking for their own purposes, but postmarking is not and has not been a service that the Postal Service has provided to the public for such purposes. The postmark has always fundamentally existed to perform functions internal to Postal Service operations”. Regardless of the postmarks’ original purpose, Americans have been using them as a form of verification for decades. This change will only lead to more confusion.
