"California's elections chief: Postal center closures threaten integrity of upcoming election"

I am quoted in this article in the Mercury News. 

Perhaps neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays its couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, but the U.S. Postal Service's downsizing plan is threatening the integrity of California's upcoming elections, the state's top elections official said Wednesday.

Beleaguered after years of falling revenue, the Postal Service has proposed closing up to 11 mail processing centers in California as part of a national restructuring. And that could delay hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots from arriving at registrars across the state in time to be counted, Secretary of State Debra Bowen warned.

...

Loyola Law Professor Jessica Levinson, an election-law expert who edits the PoLawTics blog, thinks that's wise. Voting by mail costs less than traditional polling places and boosts voter participation, she said, "but the mail service has to be functional and predictable, and it sounds like this is a close-to-disastrous decision when it comes to protecting the integrity of that system."