Mail Services prioritizes electoral mail following concerns of lost ballots

In response to recent difficulties among students in receiving their absentee ballots, the Mail Services Department initiated a new process for voting-related mail. This initiative was launched in coordination with JumboVote to ensure ballots are not mishandled.

“Since the mail room became aware of possible problems with the normal procedure for sorting mail in regards to ballots, the mailroom employees started looking for and pulling out ballots to ensure no ballots were still awaiting delivery,” Jeff McKay, director of facilities operations, wrote in an email to the Daily.

Lidya Woldeyesus, the student co-chair of JumboVote, explained that JumboVote involved themselves as soon as they heard about the issue.

“Tisch College was doing what they could to remedy the situation,” Woldeyesus, a sophomore, said. “I was talking to students individually, but also [we were] trying to figure out what the long-term solution [is] because the primary season isn’t over.”

In one of these cases,sophomore Eli Goodrich requested an absentee ballot on Feb. 3 from his home state of Maine so he could vote in the Democratic primary election on Super Tuesday. After a month of waiting, with the election come and gone, Goodrich has yet to receive his ballot.

Goodrich suspected that the ballot either never reached Tufts — in which case it is an United States Postal Service (USPS) issue — or that it may have been mishandled and misplaced by Mail Services.

“A bunch of people told me that they were also having issues getting their ballots and had issues in the past getting other important mail,” Goodrich said. “I believe there’s one instance in which one of the students was waiting for a credit card or debit card and it hadn’t gotten there, and it had been two to three months.”

While some students reregister to vote in Massachusetts when they move here to attend school, others, like Goodrich, feel their vote is most useful in their home states, so they request absentee ballots, which are sent in the mail by USPS.

“I’m a Democrat, and Massachusetts is a very safe democratic state,” Goodrich said. “Massachusetts does not need my vote. I wouldn’t call [my district in Maine] safe enough so that I feel like I should skip out on voting.”

McKay explained that mail is meant to arrive in students' mailboxes within two business days of reaching the mailroom.

“Within one business day of arrival, the mail is sorted and then placed in the correct bin for distribution to the correct residential hall,” McKaysaid. “If mail is correctly addressed, it is delivered to the residential hall. The goal is for delivery to take place within two business days.”

This process is true for students living in most residential halls. Miller Hall and Houston Hall, however, do not have student mailboxes; therefore, students living in these halls need to travel to Mail Services to pick up their mail in a process similar to that of packages.

“For USPS mail arriving for Miller and Houston Hall, after the mail is sorted with the correct address, an e-mail goes out to the residents of the two dorms letting them know that they have mail in the Hill Hall mailroom,” McKay wrote. “The goal is that this e-mail goes out within one business day.”

McKay asserted that the process by which mail is sorted at Tufts has not slowed down recently, nor has the mailroom been understaffed.

“We are appropriately staffed,” McKay said. “This is not a new problem, however a lot of the methods of handling peak volume are new within the past 3 months ... The goal is to sort mail and packages and/or send notices to recipients within 1 business day. However, if the mail doesn’t have the correct address information, that makes the process slower.”

McKay suggested that students ensure? they are making sure their address information is correct whenever they expect to receive mail.

“It is very important the address has the correct name, building name and room number,” McKay said.

Woldeyesus assured that, after the changes were made in mail services, most students received their absentee ballots.

“When we found out everything, we were able to work really quickly, and most students were able to get the absentee ballots in time,” Woldeyesus said. “From now on, [for] any piece of election mail that comes into Mail Services, the student will be sent an email immediately, telling them that their mail is here.”

If students believe their ballots are taking an extremely long time to arrive, Woldeyesus recommends they reach out to JumboVote as soon as possible. She also explained that come the general election in November, this type of problem would be unlikely now that JumboVote is aware of it.

“What we asked students is that the second that they feel like something is fishy with the absentee ballot … they reach out to us immediately, because then we have more time to figure out what’s going on,” Woldeyesus said.