Shirley Rabasco picks up her ballot Monday from Assistant City Clerk Jolene Girouard at Auburn City Hall. Girouard will take the ballot home to fill out and then bring it back to cast it at a drop-off box outside of City Hall. Both absentee voting and early in-person voting are available now to voters in Auburn. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

The U.S. Postal Service is recommending that voters who choose to mail their ballots do so by Tuesday in order to ensure delivery by Election Day.

“As we anticipate an uptick of ballots in the mail over the coming days, Postal Service employees are working to ensure the ballots of every individual who chooses to vote by mail are delivered quickly and securely,” the Postal Service said in a statement Monday. “As in past elections, the Postal Service is ready to deliver your ballot on time. But don’t delay. If you choose to vote by mail, please mail early as every day counts.”

The Postal Service said it recommends that voters who mail their ballots do so at least a week before their election office needs to receive them. That means that since ballots in Maine are due back by 8 p.m. on Election Day, voters should plan to mail them by Tuesday.

The recommendation comes as election officials around the country have raised concerns in recent months about the Postal Service’s ability to handle a large amount of election mail this year.

Portland City Clerk Ashley Rand said Monday that “mail has been extremely slow and delayed everywhere from what we are hearing due to staffing shortages at USPS.”

Rand said the city is telling voters who haven’t gotten their ballot more than a week after requesting it to come to City Hall, where staff can reject their initial request and reissue them ballots that they can use to vote in-person or take home with them.

So far the city has rejected and reissued about 50 ballots, including for voters who made a mistake on their ballot as well as those who didn’t receive the first one they requested or who came to City Hall to vote in-person despite the city already mailing them a ballot, Rand said.

The deadline for voters in Portland and elsewhere in Maine to vote in-person absentee or request an absentee ballot is Thursday, although voters who don’t receive a ballot they requested can still ask at the polls on Election Day that their request be canceled and a new ballot issued.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said last week that her office is encouraging absentee voters to use drop boxes or return their ballot to their municipal clerk in-person in order to lighten the load on the Postal Service and give themselves greater certainty that their ballot is received ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

As of Monday, 315,605 Maine voters had requested absentee ballots, including 143,604 ballots that were requested by mail. And a total of 99,621 people have voted in-person absentee.

Other absentee ballots have been issued directly to voters, their immediate family members or third parties, have been sent electronically or were sent by other methods approved by the secretary of state.

Maine has about 955,285 active registered voters.

Of the 242,439 absentee ballots returned so far in Maine, a total of 43,294 have been returned via mail and accepted, according to data from the secretary of state’s office.

The Postal Service said it is “fully ready” to deliver the nation’s mail-in ballots for voters who choose to use the mail to vote. Even if a ballot is mailed after Tuesday, the Postal Service said it will use “extraordinary measures” to accelerate delivery.

Those steps include extra deliveries and collections, special pick-ups, specialized sort plans at processing facilities and local handling and transportation of ballots.

Bellows said last week that the Postal Service has also committed to sweeps of distribution centers on Election Day in Maine to ensure that any outstanding ballots are delivered to polling places by 8 p.m.

The Postal Service said that in the first three weeks of October, 99.9% of ballots nationally were delivered within one week and that on average the Postal Service delivered outbound ballots to voters in two days. Inbound ballots, from voters to election officials, were delivered on average in one day.