United States Postal Service has closed trash cans inside several post offices around Colorado Springs to prevent election materials from being stolen.

The post offices on Fountain Boulevard, S 8th Street and Uintah Street had taped over the front of their trash cans to prevent them from being used. At the post office on Pikes Peak Avenue and South 25th Street, trash cans were entirely removed from the lobby areas.

Paper signs posted around the Cheyenne Mountain facility asked customers to “Please discard any/all mail at home.” The signs were attributed to USPS Management and dated to Thursday.

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“It’s a prevention measure. We are in the process of removing some trash and recycling containers from lobbies to prevent rifling of election materials,” USPS spokesman James Boxrud said via email.

Mail clerks at two of the offices told The Gazette the change was to make sure customers were more accountable for their ballots and other important mail that could be thrown away.

The El Paso County Elections Department said the issue did not come up during its last call with USPS about ballot handling.

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In a press release Monday, USPS said the agency has taken ‘extraordinary measures’ nationally to sort and pick up ballots in order to deliver them to election officials as quickly as possible. The agency said that during the first weeks of early voting this year, 98.3% of ballots were delivered from voters within three days and the average ballot was delivered in one day.

Even with the delivery measures in place, the Postal Service recommended that anyone voting by mail return send their ballots by the end of Tuesday, Oct. 29 to ensure they were delivered by Election Day.

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