Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan has been on the front lines of attempting to hold the Postal Service accountable during the chaos of the 2020 presidential race. Under the leadership of the Trump-allied Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, mail delivery slowed down around the country, which potentially posed a very big problem in a year when mail-in voting has increased due in part to the Coronavirus pandemic. On Election Day, Sullivan ordered the Postal Service to conduct immediate sweeps of facilities around the country to look for potentially missed-over ballots. They did not conduct these sweeps — relying instead on other ballot oversight procedures — and Sullivan took the fight to the Postal Service’s team at a Wednesday court hearing.
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan comes out swinging at USPS to open his hearing, and USPS's failure to comply with his order.
"Someone might have a price to pay for that," he said.
— Jacob Bogage (@jacobbogage) November 4, 2020
Sullivan had previously indicated that he would want the Postal Service to answer for their behavior at the Wednesday hearing, where Sullivan suggested that “someone might have a price to pay for” the agency’s non-compliance with his earlier order for Election Day sweeps of facilities across the country. Significant quantities of ballots were unaccounted for based on data showing when ballots had been scanned into and out of the Postal Service system, but the Postal Service said that the ballots that hadn’t been scanned out upon delivery had been removed from the ordinary stream of mail in order to be delivered quicker than ordinary operations. Thus, they hadn’t been scanned out like normal procedure demands.
Despite the Postal Service’s assurances that they had been handling ballots appropriately, at the Wednesday hearing, an attorney on the plaintiffs’ side said that they’d gotten a report through an election protection hotline stating that “there may be boxes of ballots” at a Greensboro, North Carolina, mail facility. These allegedly present ballots may have already been appropriately taken care of — but the point remains: the Postal Service has faced some serious election-related questions.
Sullivan definitely did not sound impressed with the Postal Service’s failure to comply with his earlier order from Election Day to immediately sweep facilities for ballots and provide him with a status update. He commented:
‘It just leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth for the clock to run out — game’s over — and then to find out there was no compliance with a very important court order.’
At the Wednesday hearing, Sullivan signed an order demanding immediate sweeps of Postal Service facilities in Texas for ballots that had potentially been overlooked and/ or delayed in the state.
🚨U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has ordered USPS to dramatically ramp up efforts to scour their facilities for lingering Texas mail ballots postmarked by Election so they can be delivered by the state's 5pm deadline pic.twitter.com/wWeiuAYzBB
— John Kruzel (@johnkruzel) November 4, 2020
