A federal judge ordered Monday that the U.S. Postal Service must reaffirm the “extraordinary measures” it’s supposed to take to expedite the delivery of election mail in time to meet various state deadlines.
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for D.C. said in the order that the Post Office must use express mail on Monday, Tuesday and after Election Day to expedite ballots “unless there is a faster surface option through existing transportation.”
The order underscores the heightened scrutiny of USPS, given the expansion of vote-by-mail, which could play an outsize role in 2020 battleground states such as Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
The order also said USPS must reinforce that ballots with a local destination have to be cleared and processed no later than the following morning at least through Saturday, Nov. 7, or up through the final state deadlines to receive mail ballots.
Judge Sullivan attached a chart with deadlines for all 50 states to receive ballots as a reference point.
He had also ordered officials over the weekend to provide daily updates starting on Monday about an apparent backlog of election mail at a post office in critical Miami-Dade County in Florida.
The Post Office has defended its performance against reports of delivery slowdowns in areas that will be crucial for Tuesday’s election, including in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida.
In its own filing Monday, the Trump administration blamed COVID-19 for some slowdowns in places like central Pennsylvania and Detroit.
The Post Office said last week that more than 122 million ballots have been processed and delivered since Sept. 4.
“While our ongoing commitment is to maintain the highest level of service performance for all mail, we acknowledge that our full focus and prioritization on election ballots is having a near-term impact on the overall on-time performance of other products throughout the network,” said Kristin Seaver, chief retail and delivery officer of USPS.
Vote-by-mail is just one front in what is shaping up to be a messy legal battle on and after Election Day.
In Texas, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen on Monday turned aside a challenge from Republicans to throw out more than 100,000 drive-through ballots from Harris County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Houston.
“Drive-in” or “curbside” voting has been allowed in Harris County and some other areas as a way to safeguard public health during the COVID-19 crisis.
The U.S. Supreme Court has also let stand lower court rulings in Pennsylvania and North Carolina that will allow officials to count mail or absentee ballots that are received after Election Day.
In Pennsylvania, ballots will be counted as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 3 and received by Nov. 6.
In North Carolina, ballots that come in by Nov. 12 will be counted as long as they’re postmarked by Nov. 3.
President Trump has decried the Supreme Court rulings, saying he wants to know the final results on Election Day.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is warning Mr. Trump that he’ll defeat in court any attempt by the Trump campaign’s lawyers to stop ballot counting on election night.
“Our elections are over when all the votes are counted. But if your lawyers want to try us, we’d be happy to defeat you in court one more time,” Mr. Shapiro, a Democrat, tweeted at the president.
The president said Sunday that his campaign’s lawyers are “going to go in the night of” the election on Tuesday to challenge the delayed counting of mail-in ballots.
“I think it’s a terrible decision by the Supreme Court — a terrible decision,” Mr. Trump said.
• Dave Boyer contributed to this report.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.