Washington AG granted hearing Friday over USPS ballot delivery delays
Oct 30, 2020, 12:17 PM | Updated: Oct 7, 2024, 9:17 am
Trays of ballots in King County. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
(AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson was granted a hearing in federal court Friday over an ongoing lawsuit alleging “consistently poor Election Mail performance” from the U.S. Postal Service.
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Ferguson’s lawsuit is part of a multi-state effort to roll back several changes made to the USPS. As part of his request for a hearing, he cited data from Michigan’s Detroit District where on-time delivery of ballots by the USPS slipped to 57% over the last week. The national rate of on-time processing for ballots has sat around 93%.
“The reported data still show that the Postal Service is failing to timely deliver a significant number of trackable ballots, and that such ballots remain undelivered to voters or will not be delivered to elections officials in time to be counted,” Ferguson said in his request.
The hearing is taking place in federal court in Yakima on Friday morning with hopes of compelling the USPS to “accelerate the delivery of ballots to ensure that all duly cast votes are counted.”
In September, Judge Bastian granted a request to pause all recent changes made to the USPS while Ferguson’s lawsuit played out, ruling that there would be “irreparable harm” without a preliminary injunction. He also ruled that it was “easy to conclude” that changes enacted by Trump-appointed Postmaster Louis DeJoy were part of “an intentional effort to disrupt and challenge the legitimacy of upcoming local, state, and federal elections.”
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His injunction required the USPS to halt its recently-enacted “leave behind” policy, to treat all election mail as first class mail rather than placing it in slower-moving categories, to reinstall any mail processing machines needed to ensure the prompt handling of election mail, and to inform its employees about the requirements of the injunction.
It’s unclear to what extent the USPS has complied with that court order, amid ongoing concerns over the last week regarding ballot-mailing delays in several battleground states across the United States.
In Washington state, local USPS officials say they’ve experienced no such delays themselves.
“I’m quite sure everything is going on schedule here,” USPS spokesman Ernie Swanson told KIRO Radio. “We’re giving special attention to the election mail, it’s all been given top priority — I think everything is in place to have a very successful vote by mail.”
