Judge presses demand to find missing ballots
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge harshly criticized the U. S. Postal Service on Wednesday, saying that the agency had failed to comply with his order to sweep postal facilities for leftover mailin ballots in battleground states where election officials continue to count votes.
Judge Emmet Sullivan of Washington, D. C., said he would consider ordering more inspections. On Tuesday, he ordered Postal Service law enforcement to conduct a series of sweeps for mail ballots in a dozen postal facilities, including in central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Arizona and Michigan’s upper peninsula.
The Postal Service did not conduct those sweeps by Sullivan’s 3 p. m. deadline. The agency said in court filings Wednesday that they did search for ballots in all the ordered locations later in the day, but that the deadline was not “operationally possible.” The sweep turned up 13 delayed mail ballots: three in a Johnstown, Pa., mail facility and 10 in Lancaster, Pa. All were referred to Postal Service management for expedited delivery, the agency said.
“I’m not pleased about this 11thhour development last night,” Sullivan said in a hearing on Wednesday. “Someone might have a price to pay for that.”
The Wednesday hearing took place as election workers continued to count thousands of mailin ballots in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, where the presidential outcome remains unclear.
In a court filing, Kevin Bray, the agency’s top executive overseeing election mail, said that processing facilities are typically busiest between 4 p. m. and 11 p. m., as mail is returned from carrier routes and local post offices. Sweeps in the afternoon, as Sullivan ordered, would not yield many ballots, he said.
The Postal Service said in court filings earlier this week that nearly 300,000 ballots had been scanned into the U. S. mail system since Oct. 24 but had not been scanned again to show they had been delivered, including more than 11,000 in Pennsylvania, nearly 16,000 in Florida and more than 6,000 in Michigan.