Rights groups hit mail-in ballots deal

The Postal Service and its Justice Department lawyers agreed to treat ballots still in processing plants within three days of the election as express mail, which translates to next-day delivery. Ballots traveling from a printing vendor in New York to Geor

Civil-rights groups and the U.S. Postal Service struck a deal late Wednesday on speedier ballot- handling procedures, avoiding a court fight before the Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia that will decide control of the U.S. Senate.

The Postal Service and its Justice Department lawyers agreed to treat ballots still in processing plants within three days of the election as express mail, which translates to next-day delivery. Ballots traveling from a printing vendor in New York to Georgia voters would also get fasttracked. The agency also agreed to bypass processing plants and route completed ballots in Atlanta directly to vote-counters, conduct sweeps of postal facilities for any misplaced ballots and report the results daily, and follow previous court-ordered ballot-expediting procedures.

The agreement represents a detente between the civil-rights plaintiffs, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Vote Forward, and the Postal Service, which is fighting complaints in federal courts across the country. It appealed three preliminary rulings last month that blocked implementation of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s cost-cutting policies that led to significant mail delivery delays over the summer.

It also comes amid sharp declines in ballot-processing scores in the Atlanta district, the state’s most populous region.

The NAACP and Vote Forward noted in the agreement that they were poised to ask a judge to intervene further and compel more operational changes, but said they would hold off if the Postal Service stuck to its end of the deal. They also agreed to negotiate out of court if problems cropped up before asking a court to weigh in.

Postal Service spokesman David Partenheimer wrote in an emailed statement that “none of the Election Mail lawsuits are justified by the facts or supported by the applicable law.”

“We will continue to defend our integrity and credibility and counter the false narrative that is being advanced in these lawsuits,” Partenheimer wrote.

He added that facilitating the November and January elections “has been our number one priority for the past eight months.”

The outcome in Georgia will determine whether Republicans hold on to the Senate. GOP Sens. Kel ly Loeffler and David Purdue are in tight races with their re s p e c t ive Democratic challengers, the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. The two incumbents failed to capture 50% of the vote in the Nov. 3 election, forcing decisive runoffs, after becoming embroiled in ethics scandals.

More than 2 million Georg i a n s have already voted in the contests, including 721,000 by mail. More than 1.3 million Georgians requested mail-in ballots.

The agreement between the civil-rights groups and the Postal Service stems from a federal case that began in August. The plaintiffs argued to Judge Emmet Sullivan of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that DeJoy should have sought an advisory opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission before moving ahead with his cost-cutting policies, which enforced a stricter transportation schedule and cracked down on crucial overtime work hours.

Sullivan agreed, and after ordering the Postal Service to rescind the policies, held daily hearings leading up to the Nov. 3 general election to monitor the mail agency’s progress and ballot-processing rates.

Though most experts hail the election as a success — 65 million Americans voted by mail, and DeJoy reported the vast majority of completed ballots were delivered on time — the Postal Service struggled.

It cut out key ballot-tracking steps in the name of expediency that caused it to lose track of 300,000 ballots.

Though most arrived on time, the agency told the court, election administration experts expressed alarm