USPS: 815 mail ballots located at Texas sites
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service found about 815 mailed ballots in sweeps of Texas postal facilities Wednesday, according to documents filed in an ongoing federal lawsuit over undelivered mail ballots.
The sweeps were ordered by a federal district judge in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday after USPS data showed about 300,000 ballots across the country had been received for mail processing but not scanned for delivery by Sunday.
USPS said the 815 ballots it found in Texas facilities were being delivered by 5 p.m. Wednesday. State law requires counties to count ballots received by 5 p.m. the day after the election. It's unclear whether the ballots have been counted yet, but it’s unlikely the small number of votes will have an outcome on election results.
The Wednesday sweeps
turned up 232 ballots in a Houston facility and 50 in a San Antonio facility. Another 322 were found in a Fort Worth facility, 35were found in Dallas and five were found in Austin.
The court battle stems from an August lawsuit filed by voting rights groups challenging costcutting measures the Trump administration was implementing at the Postal Service, arguing they could slow delivery of mailed ballots and disen-
franchise some voters. The Trump administration later said it would suspend those measures until after the election.
Many of the mailed-in ballots found in Postal Service sweeps nationwide ordered by the judge were in swing states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania, where elections officials are still tallying votes in the closely contested presidential race.