USPS Promises No Delays For Mail-In Ballots

In a Thursday press briefing, officials at the U.S. Postal Service said they’re in ideal position to deliver election ballots for the Nov. 3 contest in a timely fashion.

“Election mail will not be delayed,” Kristin Seaver, the chief information officer for the USPS, was quoted by the Reuters news service as saying.

The timeliness of the mail service was put in doubt after new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a donor to U.S. President Donald Trump, issued orders that critics said would have slowed deliveries. He agreed in August to withhold any changes to mailing systems through Election Day, now just 11 days away.

There are preliminary injunctions in place that prohibit the Postal Service from doing anything that would limit service before Nov. 3.

A fact sheet published Thursday by USPS states that if all eligible voters in the election were to vote by mail this year, it would represent only three-quarters of what the Postal Service handles in a single day. It added that the anticipated number of mail-in ballots would be less than the mail sent successfully during the usual upcoming holiday season.

The United States Election Project, a website maintained by Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida, finds that about 46 million people have already voted in the election and 33 million of those did so with mail-in ballots as of Oct. 18.

That number is up considerably from the 2016 contest. The key battleground state of Florida is one of the states with the highest total of early votes.

A lawsuit filed Thursday challenges a Pennsylvania court deadline mandating the counting of mail-in ballots received up to three days after Election Day. That challenge comes after a short-handed US Supreme Court in a 4-4 opinion stifled a similar plea from Republicans.

The pandemic has prompted an increase in mail-in ballots. President Trump, without citing evidence, has said mail-in voting is ripe for fraud.