Judge Orders Twice-Daily Sweeps Of Post Offices For Mail Ballots

WASHINGTON, DC — A federal judge, who on Election Day ordered U.S. Postal Service officials in several states to search facilities for remaining mail-in ballots, issued a similar order on Thursday, requiring officials to now conduct twice-daily sweeps to locate any outstanding ballots.

According to multiple reports including one by The Associated Press, the ruling issued by Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia affects all Postal Service facilities serving states with extended ballot receipt deadlines.

Sullivan said processing centers must perform morning sweeps and then afternoon sweeps “to ensure that any identified local ballots can be delivered that day," Reuters reported.

Local Postal Service officials must then report “the total number of ballots identified and confirm that those ballots have been expedited for delivery to meet applicable extended state deadlines,” Sullivan added.

Thursday's order comes following one issued earlier this week, which ordered a sweep of 27 facilities located in a number of U.S. states. Officials also were instructed to prioritize their delivery ahead of local election deadlines.

The earlier order found just 13 ballots throughout several battleground states including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Florida, AP reported, citing court records.

The previous order also carried a deadline of 3 p.m. EST on Tuesday. The Postal Service failed to meet that deadline.

In their response to the court, USPS officials said they couldn't meet the requirements of the order, arguing that doing so would have been disruptive to their Election Day operations and that they had “physical and operational limitations.”

The Postal Service also said it conducted rounds of morning checks at all its processing hubs, and had also performed daily reviews of all 220 facilities handling election mail and planned another sweep hours before polling places closed Tuesday.

The Postal Service said in court that about 300,000 ballots had been received but not scanned for delivery.

Both orders came as a result of a lawsuit filed by the NAACP and a consortium of other civil-rights groups. It also came after weeks of court decisions involving the Postal Service, an agency that's become heavily politicized under its new leader, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

DeJoy, a major GOP donor, made a series of controversial policy changes in the summer that delayed mail nationwide, fueling worry about the service's ability to handle the unprecedented volume of mail-in ballots.

Sullivan on Wednesday said he would "force" DeJoy to testify in court about how the Postal Service handled the election, saying he'd depose him if necessary.

The judge also expressed fury toward the USPS, accusing it of slow-walking responses to his orders and saying the agency had not effectively communicated with its own lawyers throughout the case, according to a Business Insider report.

While Sullivan accepted the agency's response, he set a Wednesday hearing “to discuss the apparent lack of compliance with the court’s order," The Associated Press reported.