A federal judge criticized the US Postal Service for losing track of hundreds of thousands of ballots, as we read in CBS News:
A federal judge on Wednesday criticized the U.S. Postal Service for failing to comply with a deadline to sweep several facilities for missing mail-in ballots on Election Day.
The order was meant to trigger sweeps of facilities in six key battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Texas, Arizona and Florida. Some of the 12 districts included in the order have legislation against accepting ballots after midnight on election night.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who issued the order, expressed disappointment with the Postal Service and attorneys for the government and said he would consider deposing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on why the measures were not taken.
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The court is scheduled to hear testimony from Kevin Bray, who currently serves as the executive lead for mail processing in the 2020 elections. Bray is expected to answer questions about the sweep as well as the supposed 300,000 ballots that may still be in the system.
Judge Sullivan stated that the one in charge of the delivery of the ballots may have to be fired, stating: “The postmaster is either going have to be deposed or appear before me”. According to WDET, “data submitted to the court indicates that the Postal Service is not meeting its on-time delivery goals for first-class mail in some key swing states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania.” According to the same report from WDET:
On Tuesday afternoon, the Postal Service issued a statement saying that the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has been conducting daily reviews at all 220 facilities that process ballots, since October 29th, and that “Ballots will continue to be accepted and processed as they are presented to us and we will deliver them to their intendeddestination.”
However, attorneys for the Postal Service said they were unable to accelerate the daily review process this afternoon, as called for in Sullivan’s order, “without significantly disrupting preexisting conditions on the day of theelection.”
The attorney’s say that inspectors will be in the identified postal facilities throughout theevening.
Some 27.5 million mail ballots are outstanding, according to the U.S. ElectionsProject.
CNBC has reported:
The Postal Service on Election Day failed to deliver a significant percentage of mail-in ballots to several states that could determine who wins the presidential contest between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden, data filed with a federal court suggested Wednesday.The states seeing relatively poor levels of mail deliveries of ballots include Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin…
At the hearing, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in the District of Columbia called out the USPS for refusing to comply with his court order to perform last-minute sweeps in light of 300,000 untraceable ballots reported by the agency.
“The court has been very clear that it expects total compliance,” Sullivan insisted on Wednesday. “I was just as shocked to hear that nothing else was done after the injunction was issued.”
But USPS spokesman David Partenheimer said in a Wednesday email to Bloomberg News that “last night’s sweeps were completed as required.”
In a court filing on Wednesday, Daniel Brubaker of the Postal Inspection Service said that his agency conducted sweeps of the 12 postal districts Sullivan ordered them to check for missing ballots. Brubaker stressed that out of all those facilities, they found only three ballots in Johnston, Pennsylvania, and 10 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. All of those ballots were “expedited by management for delivery” and will be counted in accordance with the state’s voting laws.
We shall see how this all transpires…