SALT LAKE CITY — The election is now less than a month away and if you plan on voting by mail then keep an eye on your mailbox.
Mail-in ballots should be arriving next week and post office officials want to reassure everyone they are ready to handle the job.
This is definitely not Utah‘s first go round when it comes to vote by mail. Salt Lake County in particular has been largely conducting elections this way for five years now.
“The ballots are on their way, they’re being mailed,” said Steven Chaus, postmaster for Salt Lake City. “We haven’t received them yet in Salt Lake City but across the country they’re coming.”
But with so many mixed messages and conflicting statements lately about this process, US Post Office and local election officials want to let voters know that their ballots are safe.
“Here in Utah this is something we’ve done for many years,” said Carson Adams with the Salt Lake County elections office.
And that they will get to where they need to be on time and that their vote will be counted.
“It’s just routine to us here,” Chaus said. “And we have systems set up and in place to handle any extra volume, to handle any unknown circumstances and we have the processes in place to deal with those every single day to make sure there are no delays and that everything is delivered timely.”
Chaus has been with the post office for more than four decades. And while he’s a little bit surprised the USPS is in the spotlight lately when it comes to mail in voting, he says those who work in the office are taking it all in stride and doing their best to ignore any noise from the outside.
“We can be the example that it has worked and it will continue to work because we have employees ready to handle this and we’re taking it very seriously,” Chaus said.
Chaus says the post office slogan, “We deliver for you,” is as true now as it’s ever been, especially in this election year.