Voting advocates warn that ballot papers submitted now may not arrive in time for counting and should instead be submitted to voting facilities.
Delivery by the U.S. Postal Service remains slow despite the intervention of federal judges, and some proponents of voting say that ballot papers that are not sent through the mail may not arrive in time for counting and should instead be submitted to voting facilities.
Persistent delays include poor on-time statistics in Philadelphia and Detroit – cities in states considered critical to the November 3rd contest. Delayed voting papers will be disqualified.
“Don’t put it in the mail. Not at this point, ”said Suzanne Almeida, interim executive director of the Common Cause Policy Group in Pennsylvania. “We’re at the point where you can drop it off in person, when you can drop it off in person.”
On-time delivery fell into three categories in the week ending October 16, including first-class service for postal ballots, the postal service said in a press release on Friday. According to the service, 85.58% of First Class mail was delivered on time, a decrease of 0.57% compared to the previous week.
The postal service noted an increase in the volume of mail, including campaign mail. She promised “extraordinary measures” for voting from Monday.
“The first class postal service is almost as bad now as it was during the worst part of this summer. Eight days before the election, this is pretty worrying, ”said Paul Steidler, senior fellow of the Lexington Institute’s policy group that analyzes logistics and postal services, in a blog post on Monday.
Steidler saw potential problems if voters linger.
“If two million ballots are sent in by voters two days before their state’s deadlines, 1.4 million will be late. The fastest standard for first-class mail is delivery within two days, ”said Steidler.
More than 40 million people have voted by post across the country. The ballot papers returned by the Democrats outnumber those returned by the Republicans, according to the US election project tracking the early voting.
Democrats have accused Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Republican donor, of making a number of disruptive operational changes to the postal service over the summer – including banning employees from overtime, restricting late delivery trips, and dismantling hundreds of high-speed mail sorting machines – Exactly How the nation faced a record spike in postal ballot papers due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Several judges issued nationwide injunctions against amendments to lawsuits filed by groups of democratically led states, but states now argue that those injunctions failed to expedite service. However, their request to appoint an independent observer to the USPS to ensure compliance with the orders was denied.
DeJoy and the Postal Service have determined that ballot delivery has been a top priority since the slow mail excitement erupted this summer. President Donald Trump has criticized the postal vote as prone to fraud without providing evidence.
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