By Mallory Mankin, Staff Writer
Wheaton students who want to vote by mail this fall will need to go to a U.S Postal Service location for processing, rather than rely on the Wheaton College Post Office (CPO), which lacks the official postmarks needed for ballots.
These official markings may be required for a ballot to be accepted, depending on the applicable election rules. A Postal Service official’s stamp lets the local election commission identify that the ballot was sent within the allotted election window. This helps ensure that the vote will be counted.
Janice Diaz has served as Wheaton College’s postmaster for 26 years and has worked at CPO since before it moved from the Memorial Student Center to the lower level of the Beamer Center. She reports that students must get their ballots stamped by the USPS office in order to ensure that their ballot will be counted.
“It’s very important that they go to a downtown Wheaton post office and hand it to a clerk who will then stamp it officially,” Diaz said.
Diaz cites that CPO cannot officially process election ballots.
“We are not an official government post office,” she said. “We don’t have any official seals or any official stamps.”
The downtown Wheaton post office is open six days a week.
Diaz also noted that students sometimes have difficulty receiving and returning mail-in ballots and other sensitive mail.
“Anything sensitive without a CPO number is returned to the sender,” she said. “So rather than taking a guess, we just simply return it without a CPO number.”
After encountering these issues, Diaz said she tries to warn students when she notices mistakes and help them understand the process.
“If we catch them doing things, we’ll warn them,” she said. “It’s unfortunate that they’re going through the trouble to do it, but then they’re not doing it properly.”
These challenges come as mail-in voting faces renewed national attention ahead of the midterm elections. On March 31, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14399, which directs federal agencies to pursue measures intended to verify voter eligibility and increase election security. The order instructs the Postal Service to develop new requirements for ballot mail, including envelope markings and barcodes.
The order has faced legal challenges. On Sept. 14, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block a lower-court injunction concerning the Postal Service ballot-mail rule ahead of the Nov. 3 election. The court’s action concerned the implementation of the postal rule, rather than a final ruling on the merits of the case.
Amy Black, a professor of political science, said that the executive order harks back to the 2020 election results, in which Trump claimed election fraud. The president called the elections “rigged” and continues to warn of widespread fraud as the midterm elections in November near.
“The president continues to talk about voter fraud as if it is pervasive,” Black said. “He argued then and continues to argue that the election was fraudulent in 2020.”
Black said the political polarization of COVID-19 as part of the reason Trump claimed the results were fraudulent. Because in-person votes were reported earlier in some states, Trump initially appeared to be leading in the vote count. As additional ballots were counted, the reported results shifted toward Democratic candidates. Trump interpreted the shift as evidence of fraud.
“Republicans were much more likely to vote in person than Democrats in 2020,” she said. “Democrats were much more likely to abide by and were more supportive of restrictions like social distancing.”
Sophomore Carter Woodrow, a political science major, said mail-in ballots remain a point of political disagreement.
“They’re pretty controversial politically, and they tend to be divisive among parties and lines,” he said.
Woodrow, an out-of-state student from New Hampshire, does not plan to vote by mail.
“A lot of the school breaks line up with voting where I live,” he said. “As I’ve found in my town, the voting is right during fall break.”
Woodrow also said mail-in voting can make voting feel less communal because voters do not gather at their local polling places.
“Voting days are very important, especially for the political system in generating a positive feeling around democracy,” he said. “A point that goes against mail-in voting is that you would have less of a civic duty feeling and less unity around voting.”
Junior Abby Simmons, an English literature and classical languages major from Arizona, remains invested in issues affecting her hometown. She voted by mail in the 2024 presidential election and sent a video to her parents of herself submitting her ballot. Simmons plans to vote by mail in the upcoming midterms elections.
“Local elections are important to me and that’s why I’ve chosen to vote in Maricopa County rather than DuPage County, because I know the issues facing my local town,” she said. “I’m more invested there.”
Simmons also described several benefits of voting by mail.
“You can take your time to fill it out and as you fill it out you can look up the candidates and their positions,” she said. “I think it allows you to be more intentional than trying to remember all your research when you go in.”
Simmons said her investment in Arizona politics reflects her broader interest in civic engagement. She recalled her excitement about voting when she turned 18.
“While my political investment has waxed and waned over the last decade, I think that my excitement to be a citizen and have the ability to vote and be civically engaged has not,” Simmons said.
