The United States Postal Service is too focused on marketing itself to political candidates who need to send mailers, and should spend more time marketing itself to people who could be voting by mail, according to a report released by the USPS Office of Inspector General earlier this month.
“The Postal Service has … focused its marketing and sales efforts on the larger, more lucrative political mail market and has not developed a marketing and sales strategy for election mail,” the OIG said in the report.
The Postal Service defines political mail as mail that “promotes political candidates, referenda, or campaigns” sent by any “political candidate, federal, state or local campaign committee, or political party.”
The report criticized the discrepancy in revenue between political and election mail, noting that in 2014, “the Postal Service had over $317 million in political mail revenue as opposed to $24 million in election mail revenue.”
The report stated that 24 percent of voters cast a ballot by mail in 2014, and said the Postal Service should be doing more to encourage a greater number voters to participate by mail. “A strategy to encourage increased voting by mail could grow mail volume and revenue an estimated $2 million each year,” the OIG said, “increase momentum for election jurisdictions to transition to all-mail voting, and support the Postal Service’s obligation to bind the nation together.”
Title 39 of the U.S. Code states that the mission of the USPS is “to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people.”
The USPS acknowledged that the analysis of its marketing efforts was correct. “The Postal Service agrees with the OIG that it has focused its marketing and sales efforts on the larger, more lucrative political mail market,” the USPS said in a response letter signed by its vice-president of sales, Cliff Rucker.
The goal for political mail in fiscal 2016, it continued, “is more than 450 times the $2 million projected if we focused on election mail.”
The USPS has struggled with finances over the last decade. The organization’s quarterly financial report released this month showed a net loss of $586 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2015, adding to the more than $50 billion it has lost over the last eight years.
The agency said in its reply that it was disinclined to follow the OIG’s advice, stating, “The Postal Service feels the best optimization of its resources would be to stay focused on high value items such as political mail and not expend resources on election mail which will grow without involvement.”
Nonetheless, the OIG said it would leave the Postal Service to continue business as usual.
“We view the disagreement on the recommendation as unresolved but do not plan to pursue it,” the OIG’s report stated. “We will consider the recommendation closed with the issuance of this report.”
