With so much at stake in the next two months, NBC decided to put the largest mail service in the world to the test.
From that heated exchange with the Postmaster General on Capitol Hill, to protests outside post offices from coast to coast, it's apparent -- not everyone trusts the postal service can handle the November election.
Should they?
We wanted to know, so NBC 7 Investigates joined teams in 13 other cities to test the delivery speed of the U.S. Postal Service.
We all sent a total of 155 letters on the same day in the middle of August. We mailed local, within the state and out-of-state. Participants checked their mailboxes every day and we kept track of how long the letters took to arrive
Here's what we found:
The USPS says from April to June, 93% of local mail arrived within two business days.
But in our test, only 75% of local mail arrived in two days, and 90% in three.
And out of 155 letters, two of them (or 1.3%) still haven't arrived after 12 business days.
We will be repeating this test in September, and again in October.
In California, ballots must be post marked by Nov. 3, and received by Nov. 20 in order to count.
