NEW YORK - The postman delivers but increasingly not always on time.

“I have noticed a slow down of my mail,” said Kyra Holland, who lives on the Lower East Side.

Across the city and country, the postal service has been battered by complaints of delayed mail deliveries.

Last month, the local postal union president said new policies, like reducing overtime and dismantling mail sorting devices, were responsible for the slowdown.

He called it an effort by the Trump Administration to undercut mail-in voting this fall.

“By destroying the Postal Service, not only is he slowing down the mail, but he’s taking away the American people’s voice,” Jonathan Smith, President of the New York Metro Area Postal union told NY1 in an interview last month.

The President's hand-picked Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has acknowledged service delays but said the issues were being corrected and he denied any partisan motives. 

We decided to put the Postal Service to the test.

NY1’s experiment started on Bay Street on Staten Island on August 19. It was the first drop off, of 50 letters mailed at nearly 30 post offices in and around the city.

Twenty-five letters tested deliveries within the boroughs. Twenty letters tested the speed of delivery between boroughs. And the remaining letters tested deliveries from Westchester County and Long Island into the city.

All of the letters were dropped in mailboxes right outside the office, and scheduled to be picked up that day. Each was marked and coded — so we knew where it originated.

According to Postal Service standards, all the letters should have arrived by two business days.

But barely half of the letters we mailed - 27, or 54 percent - met that standard.

Twenty two percent arrived in three days.

Six percent arrived in four days.

And 14 percent took five or more days, including one letter that still has not arrived .One letter arrived ahead of schedule, in just one day.

One letter mailed at the West 18th Street post office in Chelsea took six days to be delivered to the Upper East Side. According to postal standards, mail from Manhattan should arrive in Guam in five days.  

“Inexcusable. You could walk it in one day. You could absolutely walk it,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney.

Mail delivered to the Bronx was the slowest: 80 percent of the letters took four or more days to arrive.

Staten Island saw the quickest mail delivery, 70 percent of the letters arrived on time.

In Washington, Democrats in the House approved a bill last month blocking the postal service changes and adding $25 billion to its budget.

But the measure has stalled in the Republican-controlled senate.

DeJoy said no additional mail sorting machines will be removed until after the election.

“But he hasn’t corrected the damage that he’s already done,” said Maloney.

What our test showed, is that if you want to make sure your mail-in ballot counts, request it and mail it as soon as possible.