Political fliers add to the burden of mail carriers

David Kihara

Friday, Oct. 29, 2004 | 9:46 a.m.

Each year mail carrier Sylvia Goodwin knows that she will be busy during certain holidays. With Mother's Day and Valentine's Day come the cards; during Christmas season, she delivers holiday packages.

But this year, she faced something she wasn't expecting: political fliers.

"It seems to me that there are quite a bit more this year," Goodwin said on Thursday while delivering mail on her route in Henderson, adding that in the 20 years she has worked in Clark County delivering mail for the U.S. Postal Service, she has never seen so many political fliers.

The volume of political mail is so high, in fact, that she has worked overtime -- about three hours a week for a month -- to complete her regular route.

Postal workers are not the only ones who may bear the brunt of the massive quantity of political mailings this year: The Postal Service in Las Vegas said the onslaught of the fliers could slow down the delivery of all other mail as well.

"When you have an incredibly high amount of mail in the system, you expect a slowdown" said Roger Wagner, spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service in Las Vegas. "It's not a surprise -- we've had other elections."

He would not describe how long the delays would last nor say if they affect the entire Las Vegas area, saying only that "I have heard on individual cases happening."

He said he assumed the high amount of ,mail moving through the postal system is "going to affect us in some way."

From Oct. 16-22, the U.S. Postal Service in Las Vegas processed an average of 8.4 million pieces of mail per day, Wagner said. That was 7.5 percent more than during the same time last year, when the postal service in Las Vegas processed 7.8 million pieces of mail per day.

Wagner said the Postal Service could not provide separate numbers for political mailings versus regular mail.

To put the numbers in perspective, from Dec. 13-19, -- the time when the post office handles the highest volume of mail -- the Las Vegas post office sorted and delivered 9.4 million pieces of mail, he said.

Post offices across the country are also being affected by the large number of political mailings, especially in swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, said Jim Quirk, spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service in Washington, D.C. He could not characterize how other states or cities are handling the increase.

To offset any delays, the main post office in Las Vegas has hired 68 temporary workers to process and prepare the mail during this political season, he said. During the Christmas holidays, the postal service's busiest time, the office hires 130 temporary workers, he said.

With the election less than a week away, most political parties and candidates completed the mailing process either Wednesday or Thursday to ensure that their mailers will get to potential voters in time for Tuesday's election, officials for various candidates and political parties said on Thursday.

The Nevada Republican Party, for example, finished all its political mailings on Wednesday, said Chris Carr, the party's executive director.

"As far as the state Republican Party goes, our job is to get out the vote," Carr said, adding that the state Republican Party mailed about 1.8 million political fliers. The party, however, is not in charge of direct mailings for its individual candidates.