Votes: Fed Judge Orders USPS To Follow Its Own Plan For Ballot Delivery In Time, DeJoy

'Federal Judge orders USPS to abide by its own 'extraordinary measures' plan for ballot delivery.' Daily Kos, 10/30/20.

Nothing is quite so emblematic of the inherent contempt this Administration holds towards our democracy than the fact that a Federal Judge today had to order the US Postal Service to abide by its own “extraordinary measures” plan in order to timely deliver mail-in ballots in a national election. A federal judge on Friday ordered the U.S. Postal Service to follow its own purported plan to get ballots delivered to election officials in time.

In a lengthy written order, U.S. District Judge Judge Emmet Sullivan laid out a series of instructions for the Postal Service aimed at areas of the country where completed ballots were taking too long to reach elections offices.



As reported by Matt Shuham, writing for Talking Points Memo, this is the perfect illustration of how corruption in government --such as that evinced by the installation of Trump backer and Republican Party fundraiser Louis DeJoy, placed by Donald Trump in charge of the nation’s Postal Service in May of this year --can have far-reaching and drastic consequences. The “extraordinary measures” plan has existed since October 20, first made public in a Tweet by by Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper. It provides detailed instructions to Postal Service managers and employees on measures to be taken to expedite the delivery of election ballots.

> But it was an advisory plan only. It required DeJoy to authorize it and make it happen. Instead, it appears he sat on it until the last possible moment, which of course seems to have been the intent all along.

The late action by the Court is not the Judge’s fault—the data on the USPS’s malfeasance and delay of service (or perhaps sheer incompetence—we won’t know which for a while) by necessity hadn’t come to light until—well, until it was too late to do much about it:

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson sought a hearing in a separate Postal Service case after data showed “consistently poor Election Mail performance data in certain regions.” Ferguson said data showed on-time delivery of ballots sent by voters in Michigan’s Detroit District dipped as low as 57%, while national processing has been 93% or higher.

As noted by a former member of the USPS governing board, quoted by the Washington Post, the slowdown in delivery to certain swing states is...inexplicable:

“This is a disgrace,” said S. David Fineman, a former chair of the Postal Service’s governing board. “Here’s the bottom line: They knew that they had an obligation to deliver election mail on time. They’ve been told that both publicly in congressional hearings and four federal judges have told them that. One can’t understand how they could not have these facilities fully staffed so that election mail could be delivered on time. It’s beyond my belief that there’s a reason that something like this could happen.”

The Judge’s Order cites numerous areas around the country where the delivery of the mail is for some reason unusually slow right now: Inbound Ballots: Alabama, Alaska, Appalachian, Atlanta, Central Pennsylvania, Colorado/Wyoming, Detroit, Ft. Worth, Greater Indiana, Greater Michigan, Greater S. Carolina, Greensboro, Gulf Atlantic, Kentuckiana, Lakeland, Louisiana, Mid-Carolinas, Mississippi, Northern New England, Oklahoma, Rio Grande, and Triboro.

As evidenced in Shuham’s report, Judge Sullivan is trying his level best to save our democracy from Donald Trump’s corruption and apparent connivance with DeJoy to suppress the 2020 vote...

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/30/1991155/-Federal-Judge-orders-USPS-to-abide-by-its-own-extraordinary-measures-plan-for-ballot-delivery

*Update: Kendall, FL, 10/30. A video of the situation in Miami-Dade county posted by Kionne McGhee, the Minority Leader of the Florida state house, that has gone viral, depicting mail and ballots sitting, undelivered for over a week:

Link to tweet