Georgia Senate outflows: USPS agrees to treat ballots as express mail

by

The plan – signed by a federal judge on Wednesday, according to documents filed in an ongoing federal lawsuit – revives similar measures implemented for the November election this year, after several federal courts intervened as de facto regulators of the postal service to ensure that its practices would not deprive it of the right to vote in absence.

It comes amid a push for more scrutiny of USPS operations this year after fears that President Donald Trump might try to impede mail voting, otherwise known as absent. The plan will keep the USPS under closer scrutiny for at least January 5, when Senate control is at stake in two games that were left undecided in November because no one got the majority of the votes in either race.

The USPS Agreement for Postal Service in Georgia, now under court order, lays down procedures for ballots sent locally in the state to arrive at the election office on the same day, paying special attention so that they arrive no later than 7 p.m. on election day.

The USPS, several states and the courts took special care before the November election to ensure that votes cast in good faith by mail would not be thrown out if they arrived after election day, as the legality of those latecomers was still in dispute. In states where the presidential election was fierce, there weren’t enough of these ballots to influence the winner.

“USPS will work with the Georgia BOEs to make arrangements for all incoming ballots to be delivered to the BOE by 7:00 pm local time on January 5, 2020,” said this week’s agreement.

Republican sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are defending their seats against their respective Democratic opponents, Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. If the Democrats turn both seats, they will control the Senate as Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, as Senate President, can cut ties in the Chamber.

With the high stakes of the Senate matches, a number of Georgians appear to be voting early. On Thursday more than 2 million Georgians have already voted, with more than 721,000 ballots in their absence. The early vote began on December 14th and will run through December 31st. Georgia also saw a high voter turnout in the general election, after which President-elect Joe Biden turned the state narrowly blue for the first time in 28 years.
This isn’t the first time the USPS has been put in the political spotlight. In August, Trump said he was against the funding of the organization because he did not want to see the money used for postal voting. During his campaign, Trump groundlessly claimed that the practice would lead to voter fraud.

This holiday season is going through a particularly difficult period for the USPS, with an unprecedented number of packages and limited staff to process them due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In November, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said he would propose a plan to overhaul the USPS in the “coming months.”

Paul Murphy and Devon Sayers contributed to this report.

.Source