| It's early September or, for the more politically minded among us, two months until Election Day. But we really should be talking about election season, with some states mailing out ballots this week. Devin Leonard recently talked with the head of the US Postal Service about what to expect. Plus, news for rare Scotch fans. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. Four years ago in August, US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy became a household name for all the wrong reasons. Protesters camped outside his homes in Washington, DC, and Greensboro, North Carolina, chanting derogatory slogans about him. He was pilloried on Capitol Hill by Democratic lawmakers. Newspapers were full of stories about how the wealthy former logistics company chief with a history of contributing to Republicans, including then-President Donald Trump, might have been rigging the mail-in vote to ensure the incumbent's reelection. DeJoy enjoyed a calmer August this year. It turned out that the US Postal Service's performance in the 2020 election was stellar. With a record 43% of Americans voting by mail, the agency transported the vast majority of ballots to state election officials within three days. Trump lost; Joe Biden won. By then, it seemed as if everybody had forgotten the alleged mail-in voting conspiracy that had sucked up so much oxygen that summer.  DeJoy. Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images North America That's not to say that DeJoy doesn't still get flak on Capitol Hill, most recently when there were glitches at some of the new mail processing plants that opened this year. But it's nothing he can't handle. "They just call me stupid now," DeJoy says with a laugh. It beats being labeled as someone who wanted to overthrow the government, which he's scoffed in the past was outside his area of expertise. DeJoy is expecting a less busy presidential contest for the Postal Service this time, compared with 2020, when the country was in the throes of a pandemic. "We did just short of 70 million ballots in 2020," he says. "I think we'll be probably low [in 2024]. The range we have is 57 to 70 million. I would say, split the baby, right?" There is one unexpected twist in the current race. Four years ago, Trump actively campaigned against mail-in voting, tweeting prodigiously that postal ballots would be the subject of widespread fraud. Now he's encouraging his supporters to avail themselves of the opportunity. DeJoy declines to comment on Trump's change of heart, just saying that any additional volume that might result won't alter his organization's performance. "We do 450 million pieces of mail a day," he says. A few million more or less won't matter. More than anything, DeJoy says he wants the public to have confidence in the role played by the Postal Service in the voting process. That's why he still gets annoyed talking about the lurid accusations made against him in the last presidential race. "The shame of it is, you scare the American people," he says. "There's no reason to do that. It's all hype and false narratives." Then again, DeJoy gives as good as he gets. He says his congressional critics were content to allow the Postal Service, which lost $6.5 billion last year, to deteriorate before his arrival. Now he's trying to do something about it, and if it upsets some people, so be it, he says. Not that DeJoy is taking anything for granted. Once again, the Postal Service will be putting in place what it calls "extra measures," as it did in the 2020 election season, when the agency extended post office hours to handle election mail, formed special lines for ballot holders, stationed clerks outside to receive them from voters driving by in cars and had workers in distribution centers root through large containers to make sure they didn't contain misplaced ballots. "They see a ballot, they're diving on it," DeJoy says of his more than 640,000 employees. "We're getting them to the election board." He says the Postal Service is also working closely with local election officials who are under extraordinary pressure in these politically polarized times. "They've got a stressful job," DeJoy says. "We need to help them out. Every vote matters, and elections are close." How can voters help? Simple, the postmaster general says. "If you're going to use the mail to exercise your right to vote, try and do it early," DeJoy says. "If you want your mother to get her Mother's Day card on Mother's Day, don't wait till the day before to put it in the mail. It's same thing." | 
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