The postmark thing still has a catch though, and it might trip up a lot of people.
It used to be that if you mailed your letter in any mailbox before the pickup time, then it would be postmarked that day. Not anymore.
Effective 24 December 2025:
The postmark will be whenever they get around to processing your mail at a facility somewhere in the system. This could be days -- or a week or more --after you mail it.
With this new rule, the only way to be certain of the postmark: you must bring the letter inside the post office to have a postal clerk manually postmark it with today's date. Or to be very sure, pay extra money for a certificate of mailing.
In response to questions, the U.S. Postal Service released a statement on January 2, 2026.
https://about.usps.com/newsroom/statements/010226-postmarking-myths-and-facts.htm
This basically claims that postmarks have always legally meant the date the mail was "processed" by the post office at a processing facility, and not the date it was "first received" by the post office.
They are saying it was always an incorrect assumption by the public that the date your mail is picked up is the postmark date; and then they justify by saying the public was making wrong assumptions so this isn't a "rules change", and instead they are following existing rules.
The "explanation" of the current situation going forward is that processing used to be local which made postmarks same-day. Nowadays most of the processing plants have shut down so your mail might go to a processing plant in a faraway city to be processed, and it's not postmarked until it gets there.
I mean, there should have been hearings about this, but there weren't.
This affects vote-by-mail and they knew this, obviously.
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janea4old ·
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