Postdate
The post office no longer promises your mail will be postdated on the day you drop it. That has real consequences for taxes, ballots, rent checks and more. There is still an option: you’ll have to belly up to the counter to get a same-day stamp. (If you want to make a statement, call your House rep to complain while you wait. Explain the situation out-loud, in detail.)
How to do it:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the constitution specifically names a national postal service, making it the only federal service with a constitutional mandate. Ben Franklin considered it key to a union, and for 250 years we’ve grumbled while enjoying the miracle of letters crossing the nation for pennies. The GOP wants to privatize services, so for more than a decade they’ve been slowly strangling the post office : requiring pre-funding retirement for employees who haven’t even been born yet, flip-flopping on EV purchases, derailing modernization with more to come.
Being able to postmark taxes, ballots, or legal documents accurately matters, but on DEC24th we lost the option to drop a letter in a blue box and be sure it would be stamped that day. Now, if you send time-critical envelopes, you have three choices:
- Request a manual postmark at the counter
- buy your postage at the counter and get a postage validation imprint with the date
- pay for a certificate of mailing (this gives you a receipt, for important letters)
Learn more about the effort to destroy the USPS here:
