Undeliverable

AT HOME IN KENTUCKY IN mid-August, Mitch McConnell didn’t sound the slightest bit concerned. “The Postal Service is going to be just fine,” the Senate majority leader drawled, echoing the soothing talking points of other Republicans: the Trump Administration was just reforming a 228-year-old institution, and President Donald Trump’s new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, was making it more efficient. The same day, Trump described the situation in his own, half-joking way: “I want to make the post office great again, O.K.?”

But the lighthearted talk just highlighted the spreading national panic that had triggered it: less than 80 days before a presidential election that will rely more heavily on voting by mail than any previous race in U.S. history, the great machinery of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) seemed to be sputtering to a halt. The “operational pivot” DeJoy announced in July, which included restrictions on staff overtime and transportation costs, produced a backlog of undelivered mail, according to postal union representatives. The Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledged that prescription drugs mailed to veterans via USPS had been delayed by an average of almost 25% over the