NORTH COUNTY -- Letter carriers and beleaguered residents finally got some relief on Election Day after days of campaign fliers and stuffed mailboxes. On Tuesday afternoon, several customers said they were glad the junk mail nightmare was nearly over.

"We are so sick of it," said "over-50" Escondido resident Ellen Griffith, a registered Republican. "And it isn't just our party -- all the other parties (have been) sending it to us, too."

She said her husband got so fed up with the number of campaign fliers that were filling up their mailbox everyday that he would simply throw them all in the trash.

"It's so annoying, and there's really nothing you can do," Griffith said.

To give an idea of how much campaign mail hit local mailboxes, the postmaster at one Escondido post office said his branch alone handled nearly three-quarters of a million fliers in just five days starting Oct. 31.

Urging residents to vote yes on this, no on that or elect this or that candidate, the campaign mail reached its peak Saturday with 225,000 fliers going out, said Duncan Coson, postmaster for the post office on West Mission Avenue in Escondido. The 25-year postal service employee noted that 734,000 or so fliers over a five-day period was a greater volume of political mailers than he has ever seen for a midterm election.

By Election Day on Tuesday, however, the number of fliers delivered from that post office had dropped to 2,450, Coson said. That post office delivers mail to about 37,000 households and businesses a day in three Zip codes.

A letter carrier who works for Coson said Tuesday that he and many of the other 150 carriers working out of that office have been putting in an average of two hours overtime a day just to keep up with the extra work that has been generated by campaign mailings.

Now that it's over, "(I'm going to have) a little extra time with the family," said carrier Greg Santibanez, 40.

His colleague Ren Everett, 43, looked at the bright side of the extra work.

"The thing you've got to look at is it's job security," said the former Marine, who served three tours of duty in Iraq.

U.S. Postal Service spokesman Mike Cannone echoed Everett's remarks.

"We never use the 'J' word," Cannone said of the advertising mail commonly referred to as junk mail.

He said that campaign mail and other types of advertising mail make up half of the mail volume that is sent through the U.S. Postal Service, and "we would have a lot fewer employees" without it, he said.

And while campaign fliers and other types of ad mail may be keeping a lot of letter carriers gainfully employed, not everyone is happy about seeing their mailboxes stuffed with paper.

Sitting in an Escondido cafe on Tuesday afternoon, Borrego Springs resident Jerry Rubin, 46, said he and his wife, who has a doctorate in conservation ecology, have a real problem with the waste of natural resources caused by all the junk mail.

"They don't even try and do it on recycled paper," Rubin said.

There is no escaping politicians this time of the year, he added.

"It's not enough that they're on your television, you open your mailbox and they're in there, too."

But before people complain too much about campaign fliers and other types of promotional material in their mailbox, they should keep in mind that it helps keep down the cost of postage, postal service spokesman Cannone said.

"The more revenue that we can generate by increased mail, the less pressure there is to raise postal rates, so the more ad mail, the better," Cannone said.

Contact staff writer William Finn Bennett at (760) 740-5426 or wbennett@nctimes.com.