On Tuesday, November 3, 2020 U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Columbia ordered the Postal Service to sweep 12 postal processing facilities that cover 15 states ballot.
What We Know:
- According to the Washington Post, the agency “rebuffed” the order and decided to continue with its own scheduling, which voting rights advocates had concerns with due to the timing.
- This order was given after the Postal Service disclosed that more than 300,000 ballots nationwide could not be traced. This was discovered after the ballots received entry bar code scans at the facility, but not exit scans.
- Allison Zieve, an attorney representing the NAACP in a lawsuit against the Postal Service as well as other civil voting rights groups, gave a statement regarding the recent missing ballots:
“The problem is, in part because of the timing and in part because they haven’t given us all the information we asked for, it’s hard to know whether the numbers we saw today — the low scores for example in Atlanta and Central Pennsylvania — it’s hard to assess how big a problem that is.”
- The U.S. Postal service is arguing that if they complied with the directives of the federal judge, it would disrupt the Election Day operations. According to AP News, the Postal Service states that doing so would come with “physical and operational limitations”.
As ballots are still in the process of being processed, many are worried if their ballot will be counted.
