WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ordered U.S. Postal Service inspectors to sweep more than two dozen mail processing facilities for lingering mail-in ballots and for those ballots to be sent out immediately.
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The order, which includes centers in central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, south Florida and parts of Wisconsin, comes after national delivery delays leading up to the election and concerns the agency wouldn’t be able to deliver ballots on time.
The Postal Service’s ability to handle the surge of mail-in ballots became a concern after its new leader, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major GOP donor, implemented a series of policy changes that delayed mail nationwide this summer. Delivery times have since rebounded but have consistently remained below the agency’s internal goals of having more than 95% of first-class mail delivered within five days, with service in some battleground areas severely lagging, according to postal data.
I wonder where all this concern was during the 2012 election when the Obama administration proposed closing 223 mail processing facilities, and when Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State John Husted complained the affect that would have on Ohio’s absentee ballots, not to mention the 9 sorting facilities that the Obama administration shut down in Republican Kentucky shortly before the election.