Voting by Mail Won’t Save the Postal Service

The U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) financial problems have prompted policymakers to consider any and all ideas for cutting costs and raising revenues. But election reformers hoping to save their neighborhood post offices by expanding voting by mail will be disappointed, according to a recent government report.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), conducting the 2008 presidential election completely by mail would have produced postal revenues ranging from $224 million to $415 million, less than 1% of the USPS’s FY 09 revenue ($68.1 billion). The memo noted that, assuming 190 million ballots were mailed (one for each registered voter) and 134 million returned (representing the number of ballots cast), the resulting total of 324 million mail pieces would represent only 0.2% of the USPS’s FY 09 mail volume of 177 billion pieces.

GAO did not analyze the revenue potential of state and local elections, but reported that it would likely be much lower than that of the presidential election. It further noted that election mail has a low profit margin, with USPS officials reporting that they make little, if any, profit on it. The Postal Service also stated that it considers delivering election mail to be a required public service rather than a revenue opportunity.