As the Trump administration escalates its efforts to limit mail voting ahead of the midterm election, California officials are increasingly advising anxious voters to forgo returning their ballots via the U.S. Postal Service.
After the administration's plan to curtail voting by mail was once again blocked by a federal judge, the Trump administration on Sunday renewed its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to allow its plan to continue ahead of the November election. For years, President Donald Trump has attacked voting by mail - calling it "mail-in cheating" and, without evidence, blamed it for voter fraud that he says cost him the 2020 election.
The Supreme Court will have to weigh in again on Trump's executive order, which requires states to supply the USPS with lists of mail ballot recipients and to print unique barcodes on all outgoing and return ballot envelopes. The order allows the USPS to refuse to deliver ballots that don't comply with the new standard or are from voters who don't appear on the lists.
"All of that is still caught in litigation, while we have already printed our return envelopes and our ballots were printed earlier," said Melvin Levey, the registrar of voters in Merced County, where USPS changes to its postmarking process led to an increase in rejected ballots in the past two elections.
As anxieties over how the USPS and Trump's policies may influence the election that is less than two months away, counties are promoting their fleets of ballot drop boxes, which can accept ballots from voters anywhere in the state, regardless of where they're registered.
California uses drop boxes not only to make things easier for voters, but also to get the ballots in election officials' hands faster. Voters who utilize the boxes cut out the USPS altogether in the return process. Nearly 90% of California voters used mail ballots to cast their votes during the June primary election. In California, every registered voter is automatically sent a ballot by mail.
In a statement following a separate Supreme Court ruling on mail voting earlier this summer, Orange County Registrar Bob Page encouraged voters concerned about relying on USPS to use the drop boxes or directly hand completed ballots to an election official in one of the county's voting offices. He also asked voters to consider returning their ballots early to speed up results on election night.
Rep. Mike Levin, D-Oceanside (San Diego County), wrote on social media after the primary that while he believes California and others states will prevail in court against Trump's efforts to limit voting by mail, he would still encourage voters to fill out their ballots as soon as they arrive, "and drop it off in a ballot drop box or vote center rather than your USPS mailbox."
"We cannot stand by while Donald Trump and his Republican allies attempt to dismantle our democracy piece by piece, including threatening the ability to vote by mail," said state Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, who wrote legislation to protect voting language access and further prevent voting discrimination. Cervantes' two bills, passed by the Legislature last month, update the state's Voting Rights Act, and are awaiting a decision by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Levey said that regardless of how courts interpret Trump's executive order, voters in Merced County have already been impacted by USPS changes. He said that's also true for Central Valley counties of Tulare and Stanislaus because of their distance from the shared USPS processing hub in West Sacramento, where all the three counties' mail is postmarked.
The USPS announced in August 2025 that it could no longer guarantee that a piece of mail would be postmarked on the same day it was dropped in a mailbox or USPS box. The USPS has consistently said returning a ballot a week before an election will give it enough time to ensure it's postmarked by Election Day. Voters can also go inside a brick-and-mortar post office and ask a clerk to postmark the ballot immediately.
But Levey said he has noticed how much a day or two can make or break a ballot being counted in California. The state accepts and counts ballots that arrive up to eight days after Election Day - but only if they've been postmarked by Election Day.
In November 2024, 238 of the 87,000 ballots cast in Merced County were rejected - mostly for being postmarked after Election Day, Levey said. In the November 2025 special election, the number of rejected ballots shot up to 1,669 out of 57,000 ballots cast. In the June primary, where about 47,000 ballots were cast, the number of rejected ballots was 1,226.
"As we spoke to voters, the vast majority said they turned it in on time to the post office or put it in the mailbox," he said, "but they were postmarked one to three days after Election Day even if we still received them during a seven-day window."
In response, Levey's team has already decided to deploy up to 21 drop boxes across the county - more than double the number required by California law, which calls for one box for every 15,000 registered voters. Merced County's registered voter count is about 136,000.
Now, Levey's message to voters is that election drop boxes are the safest option if they want to avoid the headache of calculating when their ballot might be postmarked. Each county regularly empties the drop boxes, which are locked down at 8 p.m. on Election Day. As long as the ballot is in the box before that deadline and filled out with the proper signature, it will be counted, Levey said.
Meanwhile, election officials are also weary of the system USPS is planning to deploy to heed Trump's orders. A USPS whistleblower has said the systems the agency is using to implement the order are chaotic, untested and "fundamentally flawed" in a formal disclosure to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
"The recent allegations regarding the development and implementation of new systems are concerning and warrant a level of scrutiny, independent testing, and security review comparable to the rigorous standards applied to the certification of election systems," Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan said in a statement. "Regardless of how these issues develop, our priority remains ensuring voters have reliable access to their ballot and multiple ways to participate."
"Our focus is ensuring every voter has the information, access, and options they need to participate with confidence," Logan said.
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This article originally published at California officials urge voters to circumvent USPS as Trump's war on mail voting escalates.