USPS processed 150,000 ballots after Election Day, jeopardizing thousands of votes

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Washington Post

More than 150,000 ballots were caught in U.S. Postal Service processing facilities and not delivered by Election Day, agency data shows, including more than 12,000 in five of the states that have yet to be called for either President Trump or his Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
Follow the latest on Election 2020

Despite assurances from Postal Service leaders that agency officials were conducting daily sweeps for misplaced ballots, the mail service acknowledged in a court filing Thursday that thousands of ballots had not been processed in time, and that more ballots were processed Wednesday than on Election Day.

The number of mailed ballots the Postal Service did not deliver by Election Day is expected to grow as more data is released in the coming days. Some election experts worry such delays could run up against even more generous ballot acceptance windows that some states have granted.

In several swing states, late ballots will still be counted as long as they were postmarked by Election Day and received by Friday, according to state law. They include Nevada, where 4,518 ballots arrived after Election Day, as well as North Carolina (2,958) and Pennsylvania, (3,439). But in other states — such as Arizona, where 864 ballots were delayed, and Georgia, where 853 were delayed — votes that did not reach election officials by Nov. 3 will be disqualified. Because the counts are not done in those states, it is unclear whether undelivered ballots would have made a difference in deciding the presidential election. But the delivery failures highlight the risks in relying on the mail service to deliver ballots close to Election Day.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/05/usps-late-ballots-election/

[Hekate]

1. De Joy needs to be in federal prison so badly

[SWBTATTReg]

3. He needs to be thrown in jail for contempt, which is exactly what he is showing the judge. These

votes should be allowed in, due to be tampered with by outside forces, and be counted. These thugs shouldn't be awarded for their highly illegal acts.

[patricia92243]

2. Trump did everything he could to hamper the mail, so that

they did as good as they did is to be commended

[bluestarone]

4. Fucking rethugs KNOW nothing will happen to them

trying to steal our country in BROAD DAYLIGHT!!!

[JudyM]

5. More egg on the face of trump's "supreme" justices if they consider handing him a win on the issue.

Not that that’ll stop them, but Roberts may weigh that in re: his legacy and vote accordingly.

[mackdaddy]

6. These later votes by mail had a higher percentage of Trump votes in other states.

So this may have backfired on the Trumpanistas.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. Might depend on the state

Here in PA, there were counties that didn't get the ballots out to people until late (in some instances, they sent out erroneous ballots and had to print new ones and re-send), so you may have batches of people who either had to "try again" or who had to rush and try to get them in as soon as they could and those ended up getting it clogged in the USPS slowdown.

[mackdaddy]

8. I would still like to see the judge send US Marshals out to Arrest DeJoy.

I think that this should also be investigated under the new DOJ to see if they can find direct evidence that this was a specific conspiracy to screw the election by screwing the USPS.

Probably a whole list of felonies committed by these dirty bastards.

[BumRushDaShow]

10. I think the House already has a committee (or committees) set up

to do investigations of this travesty. And I agree - at some point someone has to enforce subpoenas to this current administration because this blowing Congress off and even blowing off judges, is insane.

[ancianita]

14. One would think federal judge rulings would by now include enforcement power through apprehension by

a designated federal enforcement authority.

Who decides this? Congress. Up and down the federal judiciary. Why haven't they?

[BumRushDaShow]

16. I expect that there is some sort of "escalation" process they go through

rather than immediately hauling someone off to jail. They probably do "x" number of notices and then go through a process to file "contempt" charges, and probably in 90% of the cases, a lawyer will work out some kind of settlement with the judge to schedule some kind of cooperation.

Two people come to mind who were charged with "contempt" and sent to jail - Susan McDougal (who refused to testify in a grand jury regarding Bill Clinton) and KY's Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis (who refused to issue marriage licenses to LGBT couples).

[ancianita]

19. Yes, we saw that during the impeachment inquiry. I just don't think "escalation" is anything

but a way of weakening the judiciary and hampering judges, particularly Democratically appointed judges. It's now the authoritarian scofflaw playbook.

During the civil rights era we said justice delayed is justice denied.

When lawyers steal time that is of the essence in voters exercising their franchise, they privilege a powerful defendant's due process over suppressed voters' irreparable harm in causing voters to miss deadlines. Another form of justice delayed as justice denied.

Worse, during this constitutional crisis era, I say that scheduled cooperation is not just judge pacification, but outright nullification.

It's judges' responsibility to weigh the national context of this with usual judicial proceedings. That's not happening here. This judge has been derailed. Sidetracked by norms expected of him by a leader who himself, as a privatizer of a public postal service, cares nothing for norms.

If anyone should expect expeditious compliance rather than scheduled cooperation it should be judges on behalf of obviously and publicly harmed voters.

[BumRushDaShow]

20. Before I retired, I had been a supervisor

and when it came to disciplinary actions, there was a standard method to go through to document attempts to gain compliance and provide justification for that final action to reduce the potential to lose in court if sued - and that was to start with the "verbal warning", then go to a "written warning" (often with suggestions for a chance for remediation), and then move to an assessing an "administrative penalty" (like forcing the person to take administrative leave for some "x" amount of time), and then depending on the infraction, potentially going to the next step with a "suspension without pay", etc.

However, going right for the immediate most severe penalty (like a summary judgement) for something that is well short of an act that may have been a life or death situation, is a recipe for having your "penalty" completely thrown out in a courtroom. And this applies to the court system itself because of the appeal process that is based on showing that a lower court erred in their ruling and processes to make that ruling. You see that often when you have civil courts and a lower court will approve assessing some ridculously large amount of money as a penalty (like in the billions) against a small company, and then when that ruling gets appealed, that penalty either gets thrown out completely or knocked down to a much smaller amount.

[ancianita]

21. I'm aware of appeals' problems. But appeals also can weigh admissions already made by plaintiffs

as reason for supporting a previous judges' ruling when a national -- not civil or local -- harm is shown and known by the judges themselves.

You're saying that no matter the rights at stake for the plaintiff, due process overrides any swiftness of remedy.

I don't know how to explain this rule of law rights issue of weighing rights better than I have, except to see this as due process justice for the rich few over the timely remedy for voters in a clear, publicly evidenced massive voter suppression case.

[BumRushDaShow]

22. I think the "due process" argument vs "speedy trial"

often ends up with "due process" being prioritized, as you have people waiting forever to get a trial (like during a pandemic).

Unfortunately it is an imperfect system and there is a potential danger where one day, it could ricochet the other way and end up something like what ST ruminated about -

[ancianita]

23. Yep. Trial by Trump Rally. Cool scene. Thanks.

If there were a congressional commitment to judicial perfectability, Congress would have done something about Bush v Gore 2000, or the corporate funding of amici networks. Or they'd fund a functional, working judiciary that actually handles jury trials and regulates prosecutorial overreach and misconduct.

It is, indeed, an imperfect system.

May there never be another Trump as long as our judiciary stays imperfect.

[bullimiami]

9. im seeing around 1700 counts of interfering with an election and interfering with the mail.

im calling 1700 days in jail for that lot.

[ancianita]

24. That's all? For sedition and creating an internal national security risk?

[keithbvadu2]

11. Sabotage the PO. Sabotage the ballots. Sabotage voters' rights.

[McCamy Taylor]

12. Send De Joy to jail for conspiracy

[rocktivity]

13. If they were IN the post office as of Election Day, they should be legit

Last edited Fri Nov 6, 2020, 12:46 AM - Edit history (1)

and should be counted.


rocktivity

[yellowdogintexas]

18. depends on the state. Here, they have to be in the Elections Office by 7 pm Election Day

There may be an out if postmarked late in the day on Election Day, and arrive at the Elections Office the next day it will be accepted.

Also, Military and over seas voters using absentee ballots get an extra 7 days

[JI7]

15. This was done on Purpose

[King_Klonopin]

25. Intentionally "slow-walked" so they would be invalidated.

There should be laws against tampering with ... oh, wait...

[Dopers_Greed]

17. Scary that Trump's postal sabotage almost worked

[dchill]

26. DeJail.

[SmartVoter22]

27. Courts may see possesion as enough

If ballots are in the possesion of USPS, at midnight Nov 3, they may allow them. The fact that machinery did not postmark them does not change intent of the voters and USPS.