If you read my colleague Sean Hollister’s positive experience renewing his US passport online through a beta website from the State Department — without needing to ship his old passport — I have good news for you: that experience is now available for everyone. You can access it right here.
“Instead of printing a paper application and mailing it with a check, Americans can now renew their passports through a secure process that will save time and effort,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken writes in an announcement about the program.
Right now, the renewal website is showing a six- to eight-week estimate for processing times, and the State Department notes that mailing times aren’t included in that estimate. That all means you may not get…