USPS fails to meet federal judge's deadline for sweeping facilities to make sure no mail-in ballots are left behind

• A federal judge issued a last-minute order Tuesday requiring the US Postal Service to sweep mail facilities and rush any undelivered absentee ballots.
• US District Judge Emmet Sullivan's order targeted specific areas, including some in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, Texas, and Georgia.
• The agency chose to follow its preplanned inspection schedule instead.

The US Postal Service failed to meet a federal judge's deadline to sweep facilities for undelivered mail-in ballots and immediately deliver any they find, the agency said in a court filing Tuesday.

US District Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District of Columbia ordered the post office earlier on Tuesday to send inspectors to processing locations in several states by 3 p.m. ET to "ensure that no ballots have been held up and that any identified ballots are immediately sent out for delivery."

But the Postal Service said in a court filing late Tuesday afternoon that it is opting to follow its preplanned inspection schedule.

"This daily review process, however, occurs at different times every day," Justice Department attorneys representing the agency said in court filings. "Specifically, on Election Night, it is scheduled to occur from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., a time period developed by Postal Service Management and the Postal Inspection Service in order to ensure that Inspectors are on site to ensure compliance at the critical period before the polls close."

"Given the time constraints set by this Court's order, and the fact that the Postal Inspectors operate on a nationwide basis, Defendants were unable to to accelerate the daily review process to run from 12:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. without significantly disrupting preexisting activities on the day of the Election, something which Defendants did not understand the Court to invite or require," the lawyers continued.

Sullivan targeted facilities in Central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Detroit, Colorado, Wyoming, Atlanta, Houston, Alabama, Northern New England, South Carolina, South Florida, Arizona, and Lakeland, Florida. In many states, including battlegrounds like Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Michigan, mail-in ballots can only be counted if they arrive by the time the polls close on Election Day, even if they were postmarked before Tuesday.

The order came after the Postal Service disclosed that roughly 300,000 ballots have entered its processing system but have not been scanned out of the system. In those documents, filed as part of a lawsuit that various civil rights groups including the NAACP brought against the Postal Service, the agency noted that there are several scenarios in which a ballot could be delivered despite not receiving an exit scan.

Sullivan's order came as the GOP has stepped up efforts to invalidate many early and mail-in ballots in battleground states. Last week, GOP officials in Texas requested that the state Supreme Court throw out more than 120,000 ballots cast at drive-through voting sites in Democratic-leaning Harris County, but the request was denied.

The Republican Party of Pennsylvania appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling requiring boards of elections to count mail-in ballots received by November 6 and postmarked by November 3, but the court decided to keep the extended deadline.

On Sunday, Sullivan signed an order requiring the Postal Service to reinforce its "extraordinary measures" policy to deliver ballots in a timely fashion. And on October 27, the judge ordered the agency to inform mail carriers that they are allowed to make late and extra trips, contradicting controversial policies Postmaster General Louis DeJoy implemented in July.

"Beginning in January 2020, the U.S. Postal Service began 'all clear' sweeps to ensure Political Mail and Election Mail, which includes voter registration materials, requests for absentee ballots and ballots themselves, were not left behind. These efforts have intensified as we've moved closer to Election Day," US Postal Service spokesperson David Partenheimer said in a statement.

"Since Oct. 29, the Inspection Service has been conducting daily reviews at all 220 facilities that process ballots. Inspectors walk the facility and observe the conditions of mail... Ballots will continue to be accepted and processed as they are presented to us and we will deliver them to their intended destination."

This article has been updated with a statement from the US Postal Service.