A U.S. Postal Service letter carrier delivers mail in the D.C. area on May 19. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)

In the Washington region, the problems besetting the U.S. Postal Service nationwide sometimes look like a missing check that is badly needed to pay the rent, a bottle of medication delivered days after the last prescription ran out or a mailbox that sits empty day after day.

For residents in one Baltimore County community, it looks like people gathered outside a post office after too many delays and unanswered calls about missing mail. Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) said one woman broke into tears when she saw he had arrived to get answers for the dozens of constituents who had called his office. They had said they were worried about pills that hadn’t been delivered or money that had gone missing.

For John Wunder in Southeast D.C., the problem looks like 70 pounds of dog food.

Wunder ordered 30 pounds of food for his beagle-boxer rescue Gus online, then waited for days. He checked the Postal Service’s tracking website, which told him his package had already been delivered, although it hadn’t.

The old bag ran out. Gus needed lunch. Wunder bought a new bag — only to have the delayed order finally arrive in the mail, two days after the Postal Service claimed to have already delivered it. Now there’s an extra 40-pound bag of dog food sitting under his kitchen table in his crowded home.

“If I needed something to come on a certain day, I would not order it via the Postal Service now,” Wunder said.

Residents across the nation are reporting similar experiences — mail and packages that show up late or never arrive at all.

Many are placing the blame on the federal government policies recently instituted by new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. Employees have been banned from working overtime and instructed to leave mail behind if it is processed late, and the amount of equipment available for processing mail has been reduced.

These cost-cutting measures have hit the already understaffed Postal Service just as Americans are spending more time at home — many relying on the mail to provide them with basic supplies that they don’t feel safe shopping for in person — and mere months before an unprecedented number of people plan to vote by mail in the November election.

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Members of Congress have proposed emergency funding for the Postal Service, but President Trump has pledged to block the money. This week, he said he doesn’t want the Postal Service to have sufficient funds to deliver ballots by mail: “They need that money in order to make the Post Office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” he said, adding, “Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting.”

Ruppersberger said he talked to more than 20 customers outside the post office in Dundalk, Md. All but one said they had problems getting mail. “One lady broke down crying. She said, ‘Thank God you’re here, because I have to get my medicine.’ Another person said, ‘I have to get my check,’ ” Ruppersberger said.

Ruppersberger met with the postmaster for Baltimore, Eric Gilbert, who the congressman says pledged to move more employees into the Dundalk post office to alleviate some of the problems there. But Ruppersberger said he plans to agitate for a national solution, not just regional fixes, including calling for an investigation into DeJoy’s new policies and researching whether Democrats can challenge them in court.

Trump is “trying to interfere with our mail system, part of our country since 1775. That’s outrageous. That’s wrong,” Ruppersberger said. “We’ve got to do whatever we need to do to get this mail issue fixed before the election, to not give him the ability to suppress the vote.”

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U.S. Postal Service officials in D.C. and Maryland responded to a request for an interview with a brief statement: “Rest assured, we take customer concerns seriously and remain fully committed to delivering mail in a timely, consistent manner. We continue to review our staffing and scheduling and make necessary adjustments to enhance our services.”

Some business owners in the region have complained on social media and to their elected officials, saying they need a functioning mail system to do business.

“As a small-business owner, I rely on the USPS to get me my mail on time, because on some occasions money needed to pay my bills is in it,” said Sandi Fox, who runs a consulting firm in D.C. She said she received no mail from July 25 to Aug. 13 and still has not received a check she was counting on two weeks ago.

In Maryland’s Mount Rainier, a resident said he left an outgoing letter in his mailbox for three days and that a mail carrier never picked it up.

In Washington’s Ward 8, dozens of members of a Facebook group complained that mail has rarely arrived in August; across town in Cleveland Park, residents on an email group said that a mailbox was toppled, then removed, and the post office’s hours were reduced.

As constituent services director for D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), Pat Joseph has been keeping an eye on mail complaints in D.C. neighborhoods. She knows about the problem firsthand: “Last week I got no mail at all,” she said. “Usually I get something, even if it’s a circular, or a postcard trying to buy my house. I talked to my neighbors. They said the same thing … To go a whole week with nothing, that’s bad. That’s really bad.”

Joseph lives on Capitol Hill, and said she has logged a large number of complaints from the H Street Northeast area. She said she will try discussing the problem with supervisors at D.C.’s mail distribution site, but there’s not much that local officials can do about a federal problem.

Her foremost worry, she said, is whether the District will be able to mail an absentee ballot to every registered voter in the November election, as the D.C. Board of Elections has pledged. “It’s been crazy,” Joseph said. “My concern, with the election coming up, is what’s going to happen.”

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