The U.S. Postal Ser­vice is warn­ing states it can­not guar­an­tee that all bal­lots cast by mail for the Nov. 3 elec­tion will arrive in time to be count­ed, even if bal­lots are mailed by state dead­lines. That’s rais­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that mil­lions of vot­ers could be disenfranchised.

It’s the lat­est chaot­ic and con­fus­ing devel­op­ment involv­ing the agency, which has found itself in the mid­dle of a high-stakes elec­tion year debate over who gets to vote in Amer­i­ca, and how. Those ques­tions are par­tic­u­lar­ly potent in the mid­dle of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, which has led many Amer­i­cans to con­sid­er vot­ing by mail instead of head­ing to in-per­son polling places.

The Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion rec­om­mends mail bal­lots as a way to vote with­out risk­ing expo­sure to the virus at the polls. But Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has base­less­ly exco­ri­at­ed mail bal­lots as fraud­u­lent, wor­ried that an increase could cost him the elec­tion. Democ­rats have been more like­ly than Repub­li­cans to vote by mail in pri­ma­ry con­tests held so far this year.

Some ques­tions and answers about what’s going on with the post office and the upcom­ing election:

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE POST OFFICE?

The Post Office has lost mon­ey for years, though advo­cates note it’s a gov­ern­ment ser­vice rather than a prof­it-max­i­miz­ing business.

In June, Louis DeJoy, a Repub­li­can donor and logis­tics com­pa­ny exec­u­tive, took over as the new post­mas­ter gen­er­al and Trump tasked him with try­ing to make the Postal Ser­vice more prof­itable. Doing so would also squeeze busi­ness­es such as Ama­zon. Its chief exec­u­tive, Jeff Bezos, has come under crit­i­cism from Trump because of the cov­er­age the pres­i­dent has received from The Wash­ing­ton Post, which Bezos owns.

DeJoy cut over­time, late deliv­ery trips and oth­er expens­es that ensure mail arrives at its des­ti­na­tion on time. The result has been a nation­al slow­down of mail.

The Postal Ser­vice is hop­ing for a $10 bil­lion infu­sion from Con­gress to con­tin­ue oper­at­ing, but talks between Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans over a broad pan­dem­ic relief pack­age that could have includ­ed that mon­ey have bro­ken down.

On Thurs­day, Trump frankly acknowl­edged that he’s starv­ing the postal ser­vice of that mon­ey to make it hard­er to process an expect­ed surge of mail-in bal­lots. Trump on Sat­ur­day attempt­ed to re-cal­i­brate his posi­tion. He said that he sup­ports more fund­ing for the postal ser­vice but refus­es to capit­u­late to oth­er parts of the Democ­rats’ relief pack­age — includ­ing fund­ing for cash-strapped states.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER IN AN ELECTION YEAR?

Mail-in bal­lots have explod­ed in pop­u­lar­i­ty since the pan­dem­ic spread in mid-March, at the peak of pri­ma­ry sea­son. Some states have seen the demand for mail vot­ing increase five­fold or more dur­ing the pri­maries. Elec­tion offi­cials are brac­ing for the pos­si­bil­i­ty that half of all vot­ers — or even more — will cast bal­lots by mail in November.

Col­orado, Hawaii, Ore­gon, Utah and Wash­ing­ton state have uni­ver­sal mail vot­ing, and Cal­i­for­nia, Neva­da and Ver­mont are start­ing uni­ver­sal mail vot­ing in Novem­ber. But the rest have lit­tle expe­ri­ence with such a vol­ume of bal­lots cast through the mail.

Time­ly mail is key to vot­ing by mail. In states with­out uni­ver­sal mail-in vot­ing, appli­ca­tions for mail bal­lots are gen­er­al­ly sent out to vot­ers by mail. They’re returned, again, by mail. Then the actu­al bal­lots are sent to vot­ers by mail, and returned, again, by mail, usu­al­ly by Elec­tion Day.

Late last month, Thomas J. Mar­shall, the post office’s gen­er­al coun­sel and exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent, sent states a let­ter warn­ing that many of them have dead­lines too tight to meet in this new world of slow­er mail.

Penn­syl­va­nia, for exam­ple, allows vot­ers to request a mail bal­lot by Oct. 27. Mar­shall warned that vot­ers there should put already com­plet­ed bal­lots in the mail by that date to ensure they arrive by Nov. 3.

This has been a poten­tial prob­lem since the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, when the post office relaxed stan­dards for when mail had to arrive. But it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly acute when the vol­ume of mail bal­lots is expect­ed to explode in states such as Penn­syl­va­nia, which only approved an expan­sion of mail vot­ing late last year. It’s also acute when the pres­i­dent has said open­ly he wants to lim­it votes by his rivals by keep­ing them from vot­ing by mail.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

It’s unclear. The first ques­tion is whether there will be a coro­n­avirus relief bill that could help fund the post office. Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats are far apart on the mea­sure and Con­gress has gone home for a few weeks.

House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi and oth­er Democ­rats are con­sid­er­ing call­ing the House back into ses­sion to address the Postal Ser­vice, accord­ing to aides famil­iar with a Sat­ur­day evening lead­er­ship call. One aide said the House could return next week or the fol­low­ing week. The aides were not autho­rized to dis­cuss the call pub­licly and request­ed anonymity.

If there’s no res­o­lu­tion of the coro­n­avirus aid, the mat­ter is sure to come up dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions in Sep­tem­ber to con­tin­ue to fund the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. The gov­ern­ment will shut down if Trump doesn’t sign a fund­ing bill by Sept. 30.

States can also act to change their mail bal­lot­ing dead­lines. That’s what Penn­syl­va­nia did this past week, with the state ask­ing a court to move the dead­line for receiv­ing mail bal­lots back to three days after the Nov. 3 vote, pro­vid­ed the bal­lots were placed in the mail before polls close on Elec­tion Day.

Mass­a­chu­setts Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren and some oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers are also seek­ing a review of DeJoy’s pol­i­cy changes. In response to the let­ter, spokes­woman Agapi Doulaveris of the U.S. Postal Ser­vice Office of Inspec­tor Gen­er­al said the office is “con­duct­ing a body of work to address the con­cerns raised.” She declined to elaborate.

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Asso­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Antho­ny Iza­guirre in Charleston, West Vir­ginia, and Lisa Mas­caro in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this report.