For the fifth consecutive day, the U.S. Postal Service has reported fewer on-time ballot deliveries — on the last day that many states will accept ballots.
“The U.S. Postal Service today reported its fifth consecutive day of fewer on-time ballot deliveries,” NBC’s Geoff Bennett tweeted Tuesday. “#USPS says its processing score fell from roughly 91 percent to a new low yesterday (11/2) of 89.59 percent. Before the pandemic and DeJoy, on-time delivery rates were around 95%.”
The U.S. Postal Service today reported its fifth consecutive day of fewer on-time ballot deliveries. #USPS says its processing score fell from roughly 91 percent to a new low yesterday (11/2) of 89.59 percent. Before the pandemic and DeJoy, on-time delivery rates were around 95%.
— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) November 3, 2020
Dave Partenheimer, the manager of media relations with the U.S. Postal Service, told the Washington Examiner that the data Bennett is referring to in the tweet is “not reliable.”
Parenheimer said the data came from the service’s daily court filings. “Those are not reliable numbers. The data ordered and being provided to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on a daily basis are processing scores which are different than our normal service performance scores,” he said.
Parenheimer added that the data submitted in the court records lack sufficient context. He said it doesn’t take into consideration the collection or delivery of mail, what the post office calls the “first mile” and “last mile.” The processing data reportedly only involves when the mail is processed internally.
“In addition, the ballot data in our daily reports represent only those ballots we are able to identify and measure by use of Intelligent Mail Barcode with Ballot identifier,” Parenheimer said. “If a ballot was entered without these identifiers, it is not measured in the count and therefore is not representative of all ballots in the mail system. Many ballots are traveling outside of our normal processing network to be expedited per our extraordinary measures, like local turnaround, and these numbers don’t capture those ballots.”
On-time delivery of mail-in ballots is more critical than ever, given the record use of voting by mail across the country this year. More than 100 million votes were already cast as polls began opening on Election Day, nearly three-quarters of the total number of votes cast in 2016. Five states have already met or surpassed their total votes cast in the last presidential election: Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, Texas, and Washington.
Twenty-eight states will not accept ballots that arrive after Election Day even if they’re postmarked by Tuesday, Bennett tweeted.
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that North Carolina can accept ballots up to nine days after Election Day as long as they’re postmarked by Tuesday. The high court also ruled that Pennsylvania can accept ballots up to three days after Election Day.
On Sunday night, Trump said he was prepared to start a legal battle to cut off collecting ballots after Election Day. He said it “wasn’t fair” that the results of the election might not immediately be known.
“I think it’s a terrible thing when ballots can be collected after an election,” Trump told reporters. “I think it’s a terrible thing when people or states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over because it can only lead to one thing, and that’s very bad. You know what that thing is. I think it’s a very dangerous, terrible thing. And I think it’s terrible when we can’t know the results of an election the night of the election in a modern-day age of computers. I think it’s a terrible thing.”
Last week, the Postal Service announced that it processed and delivered 122 million ballots.
“With increased volume in both mail and packages and external challenges, mail is moving,” said Kristin Seaver, the chief retail and delivery officer of the Postal Service. “The Postal Service continues to implement extraordinary measures to advance and expedite the delivery of the nation’s ballots. These efforts include extra pick-ups, extra deliveries, and delivery units running regular collections on Sunday. From today through Sunday, local carriers will be stopping at and checking every residential mailbox for outbound mail, including ballots.”
More “extraordinary measures” were mandated by a federal judge on Sunday amid the decline in ballot processing in key states, according to CNN.
Per the order, the Postal Service must send a memo to all processing plant managers and division directors saying that the new measures “must be put in place to ensure [the] delivery every ballot possible by the cutoff time on Election Day.”
“We expect that ballots may move through our system past Election Day, as some states require mail-in ballots to be postmarked by a specific date and received a certain number of days later, while other states require mail-in ballots to be received by the election office by a specified deadline on or before Election Day,” Partenheimer said. “USPS continues to process a historic volume of political and election mail this season. The 630,000 women and men of the Postal Service are deeply committed to our longstanding role in the electoral process, and we are actively working to deliver in this election season.”
