USPS failed to process 7% of ballots in facilities Tuesday

Agency also disclosed 300K ballots nationwide couldn’t be traced.

WASHINGTON — Nearly 7% of ballots in U.S. Postal Service sorting facilities Tuesday were not processed on time for submission to election officials, according to data the agency filed Wednesday in federal court, potentially leaving hundreds of thousands of ballots caught in the mail system during an especially tight presidential race.

The Postal Service reported the timely processing – which includes most mail-handling steps outside of pickup and delivery – of 93.3% of ballots on Election Day, its best processing score in several days, but still well below the 97% target that postal and voting experts say the agency should hit.

The Postal Service processed 115,630 ballots Tuesday, a volume much lower than in recent days because of weeks of warnings about chronic mail delays. Of that volume, close to 8,000 ballots were not processed on time, a small proportion but one that could factor heavily in states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, which do not accept ballots after Election Day and could be decided by a few thousand votes.

Earlier Tuesday, the judge in the case, Emmet G. Sullivan of District Court for the District of Columbia, ordered the Postal Service to sweep processing 12 facilities that cover 15 states for ballots. But the agency rebuffed that order and said it would stick to its own inspection schedule, which voting rights advocates worried was too late in the day for found ballots to make it to vote counters.

The directive came after the Postal Service disclosed that more than 300,000 ballots nationwide could not be traced. Those ballots received entry bar code scans at processing facilities but not exit scans. The agency said the likelihood of that many ballots being misplaced was very low; mail clerks had been ordered to sort ballots by hand in many locations, and items that were pulled out for expedited delivery were not given an exit scan.

Sullivan had given the mail agency until 3:30 p.m. Tuesday to conduct the “all clear” checks to ensure that any found ballots could be delivered before polls closed. But in a filing sent to the court just before 5 p.m., Justice Department attorneys representing the Postal Service said the agency would not abide by the order, to better accommodate inspectors’ schedules.