This episode originally aired on July 15, 2026.
The United States Postal Service, in the words of the postmaster general, is out of money.
The federal independent agency generally relies on no tax money, and is largely funded by stamps, packages and other sales.
It’s once again staring at a $1 billion shortage. The forever stamp now costs 82 cents, but who’s writing and mailing letters anymore.
Now there’s a political battle over its future, and the use of mail-in ballots.
Has the postal service, with its rich history, outlived its mission?
We're talking about the future of the postal service on this hour of All Sides.
Guests:
- Esther Fung, reporter, The Wall Street Journal
- Aileen Day, co-host, People of Agency podcast
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. This is the message that Postmaster General David Steiner delivered to a congressional committee in late June.
Postmaster General David Steiner: Let me be very very very clear, we are out of cash. We are out cash. If we had to pay all of our bills today, we could not pay all our bills.
Amy Juravich: He went on to say that the agency is borrowing money from employees' retirement funds to cover costs. The Forever Stamp now costs 82 cents. But who's writing and mailing letters anymore? Now there's a political battle over its future and the use of mail-in ballots. Has the Postal Service with its rich history outlived its mission? Joining us now to talk about the financial woes of the Postals Service and the competition it's facing is Wall Street Journal reporter Esther Fung. She writes about the U.S. Postal Service and parcel shipping companies like FedEx and UPS, covering the way goods are moved around the world and onto people's doorsteps. Welcome to All Sides, Esther.
Esther Fung: Hi, thank you for having me.
Juravich: So to the audio I just played that was of the Postmaster General basically saying that the postal service is a broken business model. I mean, is it really out of cash? Is it that dramatic?
Fung: The postal service has been posting losses every single year since 2007, and it is struggling financially. They have been struggling with declining mail volume, and they also have high operational expenses, high labor costs, high transportation costs, and high health care costs, of course earlier this year, high fuel costs. And Um, unlike other private businesses, it also has a public mandate, uh, to deliver to every address nationwide, six days a week.
Juravich: And you had a statistic in one of your stories that stuck with me. Roughly three in five post offices could not cover the cost of their operations. How much of this is the digital revolution? You know, email, texting, social media, is that what's to blame here? There are more ways to connect besides writing a letter. So is the Digital Revolution to blame?
Fung: A large part of it, yes, the male volumes, I think peak somewhere around 2005 or 2006 and it's been declining since then. Lots of people now pay their bills online and they submit a tax returns online. And so, male... Volume declines have definitely impacted the postal service, not just in the United States, but also elsewhere in the world. When I first heard that statistic, three in five post offices can't cover their costs, it also startled me. And it's something that the postal service is trying to figure out as well.
Juravich: So Right now, mailing a letter is going to cost more because recently the first class stamp, a forever stamp, as it's called, is now going to cost 82 cents. That is up from 78 cents. So a 5% increase. But I'm sure some of our listeners out there can remember when stamps were a nickel. That was back in 1963. Stamps were a quarter in 1988. They went to 34 cents in 2001. And then they went to 50 cents 2018. So 82 cents, it feels like more than 50 cents, you know. Explain how the Postal Service operates and, you know, the price keeps going up. Is that working for them?
Fung: So um The Postal Service has an oversight regulatory agency called the Postal Regulatory Commission, and they also study the price increases to make sure that it is… to make sure the Postals Service can cover its costs and to make that the prices don't exceed the price increases don't exceed by too much a margin. And I understand that, yes, it really feels like the stamp price increases have gone so quick, gone up so quickly. And they do need to cover costs. I mean, the letter carriers need to get their salaries, they need to the health care benefits and when you can deliver lots of mail. It definitely helps with operating expenses, but when the volume of mail comes down, this puts a strain on the business model.
There's also another thing that the postmaster general mentioned during some of the congressional hearings. He talked about how the stamp. Prices in the US is still low compared to the rest of the Western world. And this is something that actually lots of Americans take pride in, that the cost to deliver a letter from Alaska to Puerto Rico is the same as the cost of mailing a letter from Philadelphia to New York City. And this is quite unheard of in Europe, for instance. So, um.
Juravich: Yeah, so I was trying to figure out how the US compares to other parts of the world. A colleague of mine mailed postcards from Canada, and it was $2 a piece for a postcard, right? And a post card in the United States is only 65 cents, so that's a lot more. But then also, one of your stories mentions that in the UK, a first class stamp is $2.42. So I mean, that's lot more, is the US behind in the... In price increases for what it actually costs to deliver mail.
Fung: So the Postal Service says, yes, it is behind, and it wants to have more autonomy to raise prices. But there are also other smaller businesses, rural communities who are crying out against these frequent price increases. It is tough on them. Some businesses can weather the price increases better than others. And for folks like you and me, we don't really mail that much. So we could weather these prices better. But for smaller businesses that have to mail like thousands or tens of thousands of letters every week, it really hits their margin. I don't really have an answer to how they could fix this. It really seems like it's something that Congress should also look into. I mean, on one hand, you want to make things affordable and to make sure that people can carry out their business, they could mail letters to their friends and relatives, but you also want a functional and a stable postal service.
Juravich: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and you mentioned earlier the mandate of delivering mail six days a week You know the mission and all of that and it's also to everyone like how many do you know? How many addresses the post office delivers to like what does that mandate include?
Fung: Yes, so that mandate for the Postal Service is to deliver to 167 million addresses in the United States six days a week. No one else does that. UPS and FedEx, they don't have that mandate. In fact, there are certain very rural places that they wouldn't deliver to, but the rural areas, you know, far away from everything else can be expensive. And, but when I talk to a postal service employees, they take pride in that. They take pride and connecting people and some of the postal service employees also talk about how their customers need this high frequency touch points. They are able. They are the ones who find out if their customer has fallen and no one has come to their aid. And the latter carrier is the one who knocks on their door and checks in and realizes, hey, they really need help. So the postal service does actually a lot more than sometimes what we think. They're just delivering mail and going back to their truck.
Juravich: Yeah, they notice when someone hasn't gotten their mail three days in a row, and they notice if that never happens. Yeah, there are humans instead of robots, yes. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the United States Postal Service. Recent price increases and changes with USPS with Wall Street Journal reporter Esther Fung. I wanted to note that we did reach out to the United State Postal service and The Ohio representative declined an interview. We also reached out to the Buckeye Branch 78 of the National Association of Letter Carriers, representing more than 1,500 city letter carriers in Columbus, and we didn't hear back. And finally, we contacted the Postal Regulatory Commission, which has oversight responsibility for the postal service, and they also declined an interview. Esther, I was just wondering, I mean, maybe they answer you, your questions, because you're the Wall Street Journal, but do you have a, did you have trouble, do you have trouble when you write these stories, hearing from the post office, do they want to talk about these problems?
Fung: Well Sometimes they answer, sometimes they don't, but it's the same in everything I cover with other companies as well. Sometimes they want to engage, sometimes you don't. And I try not to let that affect my stories. I still try to report. Yeah, I won't take it personally. It is frustrating. I can imagine that. Um, I guess one of the things that is, um, when I covered the, like parcel deliveries, it is also such a public facing service that I, at least I can also talk to, uh, customers who, who can, who, can share the experience about, um the level of service they're getting and, and through that, And they have also shared that. They want the postal service to thrive. They do need a postal service, but they're also frustrated like in recent years, the postal services has tried to modernize its networks, its truck routes, but that has led to worse service. Some of them are saying they are not getting mail delivered as regularly as it used to be. And, and so. For them, they said that, yes, on one hand, they want the postal service to be financially stable and yet on the other, it's hard for them to stomach price increases with a decline in services. So, so that's like everybody's. Press read it.
Juravich: Yeah. Well, and Amazon is one of the Postal Service's biggest customers, but in another financial blow this fall, Amazon said it will cut back on packages it sends through the post office. Just how much business does Amazon provide for USPS and what will be the impact of any changes to that.
Fung: So Amazon is the largest customer of the Postal Service. The Postal service now delivers lots of packages with the decline in mail. There is an uptick in packages. Everybody's just buying things online now. And so Amazon is such a large customer of Postal Services. Let me check. I think they are responsible for $6 billion in revenue for the Postals Service in last fiscal year. And Amazon accounts for nearly 15% of all packages that the postal service delivers in a fiscal year. So recently they had negotiations for the new contract and they have come to an agreement and Amazon said that the Postal Service will still deliver more than 1 billion packages. But it was a bit of a decline. Sometimes these negotiations can get quite tenuous and it was definitely also something that senators and congressmen took note of because Amazon is such a big customer of the service.
Juravich: Right. And do you know, is Amazon going to just deliver more packages themselves, or are they going to go to the FedEx or the UPS to do it? Maybe all of the above. Yeah.
Fung: Yes, all of the above. So FedEx and UPS, they also have The relationship is also kind of complicated because Amazon is both a customer and a competitor to them. Amazon has its own delivery service and Amazon has been building out its own network as well. They realize they can't really rely on other parcel carriers. And they want to do more of it. They want more control. But at the same time, they can't deliver to 100% of all their parcels. So they are also reliant on different package carriers. And it's not just FedEx, UPS, postal service. They have also reached out to the smaller, lesser-known carriers as well to help them out with this. For a customer like Amazon, they're always looking for carriers to help them in case they need a Plan B. You never know what happens. No weather issues. Yeah.
Juravich: Yeah, gotta meet those prime deadlines, right? So it's one way or the other. Yes. The Postal Service has tried to keep pace with technological advances in its delivery service. You've reported on a few things that they tried. Has anything been really successful for them in modernizing the way they do things?
Fung: Hmm So they have definitely tried to improve their tracking technology and this has been quite, I think this has quite successful. They do have some of their e-commerce customers who deliver their ecommerce packages through the postal service and customers continue to use that. Of course, there are always cases where the tracking is wrong or the tracking doesn't make sense. But the Postal Service said that they are continuously trying to improve that. And And I think they are also trying to improve the efficiency of how they route packages and mail. It is tough, especially when you also have the public mandate, the six days, delivering to every address six days a week. That also sometimes, the goals sometimes conflict with each other.
Juravich: Has there ever been talk of changing that mandate, maybe five days a week of delivery, or even four? So the Postmaster General did.
Fung: Mentioned that in the congressional hearings and said that Congress should look into defining the role of the postal service. What does that mandate look like? There have definitely been lots of talk about how could we reduce from six to four, but what would that look like for rural areas who really rely on more frequent mail delivery services. What does affordability look like? What does access look like?" It's still, I spoke with another expert who looks into the postal service, and she told me the mandate still feels a little bit squishy and and and so this this ambiguousness really hurts the postal service and the way they plan their network. And so it feels like Congress and the United States as a whole should also look into what they want out of the postal services.
Juravich: We've been talking about the future of the United States Postal Service, recent price increases, and changes with USPS with Wall Street Journal reporter Esther Fung. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, Amy. Coming up, an award-winning podcast traces the history of the Postal service and how political and economic forces could derail its original mission of service and connection. That's when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. The U.S. Postal Service is one year older than the country itself. In 1775, Benjamin Franklin became the first Postmaster General. Mail delivery has used all modes of transportation, by horseback, on foot, by boat, by plane, with its mission of reaching every household and connecting the nation, letter by letter. The rise of the internet and social media has sidelined so-called snail mail, ushering in f- a fierce delivery competition and shaking this financially fragile institution. But the Postal Service has faced crises before and persevered. Joining us now is Aileen Day, co-host of the award-winning podcast, "People of Agency." The first season of the podcast focuses on the United States Postal Service detailing its up and down history in 14 episodes. Welcome to All Sides, Aileen. Thanks for having me. So I'm curious about the name of your podcast, "People of Agency." Where does it come from and what led you to decide to focus on the post office in your first season?
Aileen Day: Yeah, that's a great question. People of Agency, starting with the name, it's really about the people who created this institution. Each season, we wanted to focus on a different institution, starting with a post office. So People of agency, it's a narrative documentary podcast about the history of the US Postal Service, which maybe to some sounds pretty boring, but I promise you it's not. But we made it out of a labor of love, but it was kind of born out of anger during the Doge era. Watching public institutions get gutted, public servants treated as disposable. And everyone was saying that this has never happened before. And I kept thinking that that's not necessarily true. So digging into the history really is what led to the creation of this podcast.
Juravich: Well, one thing I found hopeful is that the post office has weathered crises before. We'll get into that, but first, take us back to the beginning. I didn't even realize that the Post Office is older than the country itself. Who had the foresight to create a postal service and establish its stated mission?
Day: Yeah, that's a great question. And a lot of people don't know that. So the post office actually celebrated their 250 last year, but it's the post-office that made the revolution possible. The Patriot shut down the Crown's Royal Post, which was being used to surveil and censor the colonies and built its own network in 1775. You can't coordinate a rebellion across 13 colonies without a way to move information the enemy can't read. And Exactly that, the post office older than the declaration because you really needed it in order to have the declaration. It was actually Benjamin Franklin. He was the first postmaster general. And it's in the constitution, article one, section eight, the power to establish post offices and post roads.
Juravich: Ben Franklin, I learned recently, is also the father of fire prevention in houses. So Ben Franklin was really the founder of a lot of things. So what are some interesting things you learned that you didn't know? Perhaps that maybe most of us don't know about the post office. Can you give us just, I mean, I know your podcast is full of interesting tidbits. Pick your favorite one.
Day: Yeah, I mean, I was fascinated at every turn, but I really, I did not have the concrete understanding going into it that the post office, it really created the country alongside of it. Like we said, it was started before the country, helped the country come into its founding, but it did everything from build the roads, there weren't roads before, there were post roads that was moved to, created to move mail, those became the roads. Routes, the mail that had to travel, the physical network everyone else used, and really mapped early American infrastructure. And then it financed the railroads. The Railway Mail Service and its contracts were guaranteed federal revenue that helped laying the track worth the investment. And the mail was the anchor customer that underwrote the Western Rail. And fascinating, I had no idea it created commercial aviation as well. That's one that stuns people. The post office subsidized air mail routes for 34 years before the industry could stand on its own. It literally paid private aviation to exist until it was viable.
Juravich: Well, no wonder they're out of money now. Okay, so tell me more about the fifth episode. You call that one your favorite. It's about rural free deliveries and farmers. What stays with you about that one?
Day: Yeah, it's still my favorite. I come back to it every time. So rule-free delivery. And I really think that this one episode, this one story really is the through line of the whole podcast. So rule free delivery. We're going back to the 1890s here, if you can picture it. If you lived in a city, the post office delivered mail to your door. But if you lived in the country where most Americans still live. It didn't, you paid the exact same postage as everyone else. And then you had to hitch up a wagon, travel miles into town to collect your own mail, whether you could get away from the farm or not. It was the same price, worse service, just because of where you lived. And the post office said it was too expensive to do anything else. The private express companies who were happy to charge those farmers a premium, they fought it as well.
So the farmers organized, they called themselves the Grange. Farmers coming together, ordinary rural people, they didn't ask nicely, they demanded it for years. Their argument, it really was beautifully simple. We are citizens, we pay the same postage, we are owned the same service, and they lost. And then they lost again and they kept going. For the better part of two decades, rule-free delivery finally became permanent. It was 1902. It took them roughly 17 years of fighting to win the right to have their own mail brought to their own homes. And really why I love this story, it's the fight for the whole institution in one story. Nobody handed America equal service, rule America equal surface. There was no postmaster who woke up one day and decided to be fair. It was really the ordinary people with no power. They organized, they came together and forced the public institution to live up what it claimed to be. And once they won it changed everything downstream. Rule delivery is why the roads got improved. It's why we have the good road movement so the carriers could actually get through. It's the reason mail order catalogs exploded, which was huge during the time. It connected isolated farmers to the whole national economy. One group of farmers demanding equal treatment. It really reshaped the physical and economic map of the country.
Juravich: Wow This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the future and the past of the United States Postal Service with Aileen Day, co-host of the "People of Agency" podcast. The first season, 14 episodes, is all about the postal service. In the introduction to the show, I said that mail traveled by horse, rail, boat, plane, as well as foot and car to get to its destination. Is that still the case today? How does the post office connect with customers? Is it? Is it mostly now foot and car?
Day: I would say it's mostly foot and car, but there are corners of the country that are connected by plane. A lot of rural Alaska by boat, sometimes hovercraft. but there are many, many ways throughout history that mail was delivered, stagecoach, but right now mostly car, but there a few fun planes as well.
Juravich: And the post office has been innovative from time to time. Can you talk about some of their early innovations? There was also, there was this early innovation about in the 80s that they would have set up the postal service to be an internet provider, but that idea ended up not going forward. But that's fascinating. Imagine how different the post offices would be if they were helping with the internet.
Day: Absolutely. Especially because they would bring their universal service obligation into that. So backing up, a lot of people, they think of the post office today, oh, it failed to innovate, it failed, to keep up that and that couldn't be further from the truth. We look at history and we see it kept trying to innovate. It was really before its time on a lot of these innovations, but it was stopped every single time. So First, starting with postal banking, which a lot of people don't realize that the post office, it was a bank at a certain point. 1911 to 1967, you could bank at the post-office. And why this mattered is most people, the private banks turned away during this time. It was immigrants who couldn't speak English, working people, rural families, black communities and places that no bank would take their money. The post office was already in every single one of those communities. Which is why it was a perfect place for postal banking. There are 31,000 post offices, more than McDonald's, Starbucks, Walgreens combined. And they reach places no bank branch would even bother to go. Postal banking protected small depositors right through the depression when private banks were collapsing. And it made money for the post office, which is something people like to post. Talk about a lot, too, is the post office losing money. But this was a moneymaker for the post office, but the banks lobbied it to death over 50 years. And today, we have 40 million Americans who are unbanked, underbanked paying 400% interest rates to payday lenders, with a post office sitting in nearly every one of those neighborhoods.
And you talked about the 80s. That's another fascinating history. They tried with Intel post, which was electronic, international document transmission. So essentially this is faxed by satellite. And trust me that this was innovated for the time, even though it doesn't sound like it now. But this is before most Americans had even seen a fax machine before. It was ahead of its time, the public agency building the future of communications. Cause that's what the post office is at the end of the day, a communications network. It was expensive to run in the early days, but it also threatened private carriers that were moving into that space. So instead of being invested in and allowed to mature, it got starved of funding and shut down, which is a reoccurring theme. Innovation was there, the patients and the money, it wasn't. And another fascinating one is 1998, the post office wanted to give every citizen a free public email address. It was a non-commercial email address, and it's hard, again, to think about what that would mean. But they are doing that universal service, the same principle that guarantees a farmer in rural Montana gets the mail at the same price as someone in Manhattan, but applied to the internet. And email address wasn't just harvesting your data or selling your attention because I know some people are thinking, well, my Gmail is free. You're kind of the product if it's free. Nothing at all.
Juravich: Nothing is free, especially if Google's involved, yes.
Day: Exactly. Exactly. But that email address, it could have belonged to us, not because you're the product, but AT&T and the telecom industry killed that one. So instead of one public option, our entire digital communications network, it got handed over to private corporations
Juravich: Well, let me ask you a question about the federal funding. Why doesn't the post office get federal funding? Or has it ever? Could it? Because if the mandate is to deliver mail everywhere, even to the most remote rural households six days a week, why isn't taxpayer money going toward it?
Day: Yeah, that's a great question. And when we talk about the playbook in the podcast that we've done this fight before, we look back in history. But this kind of modern era is the last 50 years of postal history. It started in 1970 with the Postal Reorganization Act. That's what created the post office we have now and the framing of the law that the post office should be run like a business, self-funding, off the federal budget. And that's the moment in history that the measuring stick kind of got swapped. Everything since then has kind of been a consequence of that. So instead of this is a public institution that should receive regular taxpayer funding, it's funded by stamps because it is an public institution that's required to be looked at as a business. So the Reagan years followed the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act. And that was a serious sustained push towards privatization and the private industry statutes, the monopoly on letter mail, where the thing everyone was trying to pry open. It didn't happen, but not because anyone else in charge decided against it. Then that next chapter of history is 2011, 2012, Congress seriously debated ending Saturday delivery. And so that, it was, I don't know if you remember the Staples fight, but they were trying to move post offices inside of Staples. But I'm kind of getting away from your question, I'm realizing. But it was.
Juravich: Well, I had forgotten about, now that you mention it, yes, we did try to move post offices into staples and there aren't as many staples as there used to be, but that's a whole other show. Okay, but I mean, could it get federal funding if they want it to keep existing?
Day: Oh, absolutely. We have the power to push the institution to be able to have taxpayer funding.
Juravich: Well, but if Congress is the one who would have to change it to be male only five days a week or four days a week to save money, it's striking to me that there's no federal funding involved, but Congress still controls it, right? Yep. Absolutely. So it's not privatized, but it's kind of privatized. What's in between it being public and private? It's medium
Day: Yeah, medium is a good way to put it because privatization, it's never been about one vote that it has in Congress. It's a slow sequence of individual defensible decisions. And that's kind of what we see throughout history and the pattern of other public institutions too. We see it where it's, okay, you defund it, you let it fail, you point to it failing, you call it obsolete, and then you're able to break it off more and privatize it more. Hmm
Juravich: All right, well, that hits close to home with the public media and the federal funding, but we're gonna continue on. Yes, we are talking about the future of the United States Postal Service with Aileen Day, co-host of the "People of Agency" podcast. The first season is all about the Postal service and Aileen is staying with us. Coming up, we're going to talk about the pivotal role the Postals Service plays in our elections and why mail-in voting is front and center heading into November. That's when all sides continues on 89 7 NPR news.
You're listening to All Sides, I'm your host Amy Jurovich. We're talking this hour about the future of the United States Postal Service. Amid steep financial losses, it raised the cost of a first-class postage stamp and packages while tacking on a temporary fuel surcharge. Will these moves be enough and has the Postal service with its rich history outlived its usefulness in this digital era? Or will Americans rediscover the thrill that comes from spotting a letter in the mailbox? One, a human took the time to write by hand and pop in the post. One that maybe, perhaps, isn't easily hacked. This is all sides, and still with us is Aileen Day, co-host of the award-winning podcast, "People of Agency." The first season of the podcast is 14 episodes all about the postal service. Thanks again for being with us, Aileen. Thanks for having me. So President Trump has talked about privatizing the Postal Service, and other countries have tried it too. What did they all learn about the idea of privatizing it?
Day: Yeah, we focus one episode just on looking at other countries because it's another playbook that they have tried this exact thing, that the road we're going down, didn't exactly work out. So it is the clearest warning we have. We look at other country's who were told privatization would mean efficiency. And Denmark is the starkest case. They just ended their state's postal service, which was more than 400 years old. It now costs four and a half dollars to mail a single letter. And in a lot of places, you can't even use a mailbox. You have to go to a kiosk run by a private delivery company. The UK also privatized Royal Mail in 2013. By 2024, it was getting fined millions of pounds for missing its delivery targets while service quality dropped. The same story in countries that went that route. They get worse service, higher prices. And the profitable parts skimmed off while the rural areas get abandoned.
And then there's the contrast. Countries that kept their post office public didn't, they didn't maintain service or they expanded what the post office could do. Like Japan Post Bank served something like 180 million accounts with just banking, which is something we've had in the past and they were really able to invest in and expand. Germany's postal bank has millions of customers. Switzerland offers government services at nearly 2,000 post offices. The public model didn't fail. They were really able to grow it and serve more people because of it. The thing that makes this maddening is that privatization, it can't even work at scale for American scale. No private carrier is going to deliver all 169 million addresses at a flat rate. So what you'd actually get is the profitable roots sold off and everyone else stranded.
Juravich: Like charging different prices for rural people versus a city or a suburb, yeah.
Day: Absolutely, so when people talk about privatization, let the market sort it out. You don't have to guess what happens because other countries, they ran this experiment. It made things worse everywhere that they tried it and we would just be volunteering to repeat it.
Juravich: So your day job is as a political consultant, mainly for issue-based organizations. Most of us probably don't think of the Postal Service as a politically entity, but is that changing? I mean, is the post office a political leverage chip now?
Day: It's interesting because the post office, it's the most popular government institution with 91% approval across party lines. So it's really, I think the only institution we have left that is not political. I think some people try to make it political. I think we're gonna talk about mail-in voting next. Some people try politicize it, but especially its reach and rural areas. And its popularity in rural areas, it creates a challenge to completely privatize it, completely strip it away, though we are moving down that track silently.
Juravich: Yeah, if anyone who has ever had a good relationship with their mail carrier probably would rate the post office very high, right? Absolutely. Yes. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the future of the United States Postal Service with Aileen Day, co-host of the "People of Agency" podcast. The first season is all about the postal service. So as you said, mail and voting. The last episode of your podcast walks through the current challenge with mail-in voting and a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling. I mean, tell me what is at stake here because the post office, you know, they have to get those ballots and keep them secure and get them to where they need to be. So talk to me about that.
Day: Yeah, the post office, it's a democratic institution, not just because it made the free press possible, not just, because it created the country, but because it literally has us voting. It's 48 millions of Americans voted by mail in 2024. That's about one in three voters in several states. Mail isn't a backup. It's the primary way people vote. So we're talking seniors, voters with disabilities. Military families overseas, rural voters, working people who can't go to a polling place on a Tuesday. And the post office has been quietly been very good at this. Though some people maybe would like to point to the one test case that wouldn't. But in 2024, the post-office delivered 99 million ballots and 99.88% arrived within seven days. That's an institution doing its job at a level almost nothing else in American life matches.
Juravich: And yeah, well, so President Trump signed an executive order in March restricting voting by mail. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Day: Yeah, so trying to restrict voting by mail is only going to make the country less representative, let the democracy work less because you're not electing who the country wants to elect. I know that there's some people really point to the like blue wave or the red wave that happens after ballots are cast because they have to count all the mail-in ballots. That doesn't change elections, that just makes the elections more accurate.
Juravich: Yeah, the main thing behind the bill is they're saying that where the fraud is occurring, if all the polling locations don't have fraud, then it must be by the mail, right? That's where the front is happening. Can you tell, did you look into that at all, whether these mail-in ballots are secure? I guess the post office's job is just to deliver them. Whether or not people fill them out correctly is not their problem, right?
Day: Yeah, I mean, I really focused on more of the history but try to catch up on the current day as well, especially because there's so much breaking news happening now around the post office. But mail-in balloting is absolutely secure. There are very, very few cases that that is not happening, but mail- in balloting is absolutely secure way of.
Juravich: Yeah, and in Ohio, the Republican-led majority recently ended a four-day grace period we had. The governor signed that into law. So in Ohio your absentee ballot must arrive in the mail at the Board of Elections by Election Day. There used to be four days afterward, you know, if things got a little slow in the mail. So we've had shows talking about this change and the getting rid of the grace period and how. You know, like and made jokes about, oh, now we have to rely on the postal service to get it there on time. But really it's up to the voter has to put it in the mail on time, right? Is that what you would say from your perspective?
Day: Absolutely, and I'm glad that you bring that up because that is a big change that we're really gonna have to shout from the rooftops when it comes to November. Because people are used to it working a certain way and we look at the post office and how they're changing what a postmark means is a little differently now too. So if I would give anyone any advice, yes, get it there on time, but try to get it their even before time if possible because We are dealing with some cutbacks at the postal service as well, even though, again, 99% delivered within seven days is an amazing feat. We have some sorting facilities shutting down, so it might take just a little bit longer. But it's really important to get that in before you think it needs to go into.
Juravich: Here's an exchange between Postmaster General David Steiner and Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat from Michigan, at a congressional committee meeting.
Senator Gary Peters: Yes or no, if a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government, will the Postal Service still mail their ballots under this proposal?
Postmaster General David Steiner: Under our proposed regulation, no. We would tell the state that we need the manifest in order to, you know, look, what we're asking for. I mean, that's, that, that...
Senator Gary Peters: That's the answer, you tell no. So the proposed rule basically coerces states to conform to these new requirements and hand over their absentee voter rolls or face the consequences of not being able to vote by nails.
Juravich: So that exchange kind of is an illustration of the post office being used as a political bargaining chip, right?
Day: Absolutely, absolutely used. And it's interesting the past two postmaster generals have really been used as tools to make the system of the post office shrink and its ability. And they're able to use stories like this to point to see the post-office isn't effective. Again, defund it, let it fail, call it obsolete, privatize it. And so it's hard to defend that as not a political act because it is, but looking at the system as a whole I think is important when we zoom out.
Juravich: So the promo for the show that ran posed the question, does anyone actually write letters and put them in the mail anymore? And I got a phone call this morning from someone who says, yes, I do. I still write letters. So I was just wondering from your perspective, like doing this 14 episode podcast, did that give you more affection to mailing a letter, like a handwritten letter?
Day: Absolutely. And I've always loved mailing letters. But it really did double down on my love for it. I actually brought two letters here today, the most recent one I got and one of my favorite ones that I received. And it's hard even in the 14 episode series. I tried to do this. I don't even know if I captured it, but it's just hard to put into words the power of mailing a letter, the physical. Um, someone thinking about you took time to write, um, a little note, put a, put a, um stamp on it. Um, but it really, and we talk about this, I believe it's an episode seven, um, holding a physical thing and grains in your memory so much more than, um, seeing something you see on Instagram.
For example, one of these, the letters is, um. Uh, birth announcement about my little cousin Augie who's 11 now, and it's It's the coolest piece of mail, but that happens online now and it doesn't ingrain your memory as more. I mean, maybe you'll write a congratulations comment on it. And so as connected as we are today, it really feels like we've been so disconnected and writing each other letters, I think is such a way to kind of defeat that doom scroll of it all.
Juravich: I want to say thank you to Aileen Day, who has been with us today. The name of the podcast is "People of Agency," and the first season is all about the United States Postal Service. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. And I believe season two is going to be about journalism, is that right?
Day: That's the goal.
Juravich: All right. Well, yeah, well, I definitely want to talk to you about that one. So thank you so much for joining us. Aileen Day, co-host of the podcast, "People of Agency." Thank you so much for your time today.
Day: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: And you're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. Thanks for joining us. If you missed any part of today's show, listen back at our website, wosu.org slash all sides. Subscribe to the All Sides podcast and every episode is available to listen to for free in our mobile app. Be sure to like the show on Facebook and follow us on Instagram. Our Instagram handle is at All Sides WOSU. I'm Amy Juravich with you on 89.7 NPR News. Thanks for listening.