USPS BLEW IT, Failed To Find 300,000 Missing Ballots Across The Country
Earlier reports showed that something like 300,000 mail-in ballots vanished from post offices around the US. While it's not known just how many of these ballots were for Trump or Biden, it highlighted one of the many vulnerable weaknesses in the 'mail-in' ballot plan.
According to USA Today, the U.S. Postal Service blew a court-ordered deadline Tuesday to sweep mail-processing facilities in more than a dozen states for missing election ballots that could number in the hundreds of thousands.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington ordered the sweep Tuesday morning after the Postal Service said its delivery performance had dropped over the past five days and could not say whether more than 300,000 ballots received in its facilities had been delivered.
The sweep was to happen in 12 postal districts, including in battleground states Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.
Sullivan gave the agency until 3:30 p.m. to finish the task.
The Postal Service said in its update to Sullivan at 4:30 p.m. that it was unable to conduct the sweep because it would have “significantly” disrupted its Election Day activities. Instead, the agency said, it would continue its preplanned daily review process in its 220 facilities nationwide that process ballots and would try to deliver any remaining ballots.
Some states have strict cut-offs that won't allow late voting- even if it's postmarked from before the cut-off date.
The report goes on to stress that the window to get votes in is closing fast. The deadline for mail-in ballots was at the close of polls Tuesday night or had already passed in 29 states.
Reports of undelivered ballots cropped up over the weekend, including in Miami-Dade County, Florida. A sweep of the Princetown Post Office in Miami found 62 ballots.
Between missing, stolen, destroyed, and changed ballots, I hope we have all learned a valuable lesson here. We clearly need a more secure way to vote remotely, if this is to become a widely used option in the future.