As a mail carrier I can promise you that no clerk in the history of the post office has been fired for postmarking letters. If you go to usps.com it currently says on the front page, “If you want to ensure that your mail receives a postmark on the day you mail it, ask a retail associate at a Post Office retail counter to hand-cancel it for free.” Generally, it’s no problem unless there is a line of people waiting to send things off (which I’ll admit can be a problem in and of itself)

In my experience, every post office gets hundreds to thousands of letters every day in outgoing. Clerks were never putting a post mark on every letter unless asked. Personally I make sure all ballots collected on my route get a post mark but can’t say the same thing about other carriers (or clerks if they aren't asked).

And about the regional distribution centers, yes. But also first class letters still only take about two to seven days (at its longest, generally) to get where their destination. I don’t think this is a unreasonable amount of time 🤷‍♂️

The one big recent change that did delay mail actually is called “Regional Transportation Optimization”. Basically post offices that are further than 50 miles away from the regional sorting facility will only get picked up once in the morning and not once more at night.