Judge orders Election Day sweep for missing mail ballots, including in South Florida

Postal inspectors remained on site at a Miami mail processing facility to monitor for potential incidents involving election mail, according to a court filing Tuesday afternoon.

Officials with the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General were at the Miami Processing and Distribution Center on Northwest 72nd Avenue near Miami International Airport as part of an extraordinary Election Day federal court order issued earlier Tuesday commanding the USPS to sweep mail processing facilities for undelivered ballots in a dozen postal districts nationwide, including South Florida.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the agency to “ensure that no ballots have been held up and that any identified ballots are immediately sent out for delivery.” He ordered sweeps of mail facilities between 12:30 p.m. and 3 p.m. and requested a status update by 4:30 p.m.

The order came after the Postal Service filed data in court Tuesday showing about 300,000 ballots nationwide that haven’t been scanned to confirm they were delivered, even though USPS says they were processed.

USPS also shared data that revealed low on-time delivery scores of completed ballots, including about 74% in South Florida.

Florida law requires mail ballots to be received by county elections officials by 7 p.m. on Election Day.

In their afternoon status update filing, USPS attorneys said the agency was not able to move up the time of its scheduled postal facility sweeps to meet the 12:30 to 3 p.m. window the court had set. Instead, the sweeps are taking place as scheduled from 4 to 8 p.m.

Shortly after the status update was filed, attorneys for plaintiffs including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed for an emergency special conference to discuss the matter.

The order did not apply to individual post offices like the one in South Miami-Dade County where 62 unprocessed ballots were found this weekend. The USPS had previously been ordered to conduct measures to ensure ballots are collected at individual post office locations.

“Today’s order was targeted at a particular concern that USPS’ own data showed,” said Sam Spital, an attorney representing the NAACP. “We’re hopeful that the series of measures the courts have implemented over the past week ensure every ballot gets counted.”

South Florida processing facilities include the Miami International Service Center, the Miami Processing and Distribution Center, the Royal Palm Processing and Distribution Center in Opa-locka, and the West Palm Beach Processing and Distribution Center. Only the Miami Processing and Distribution Center was included on a list submitted by USPS attorneys showing where postal inspectors remained on site.

Other districts where Sullivan ordered sweeps are Central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Detroit, Colorado/Wyoming, Atlanta, Houston, Alabama, Northern New England, Greater South Carolina, Lakeland (Wisconsin and Northern Illinois) and Arizona.

All of those districts, except Arizona, are ones “where processing scores have been below — in many cases well below — the expected minimum,” attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote Tuesday.

The judge said either inspectors from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service or officials from the USPS Office of Inspector General could conduct the sweeps Tuesday. Representatives for USPS and the inspector general’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on how they planned to approach it in South Florida.

Sullivan also ordered USPS to reveal a list of 27 mail processing centers nationwide where the inspector general’s office has conducted visits since Oct. 19.

Investigators revealed Monday that they found a backlog of 180,000 pieces of mail at the Princeton Post Office in South Miami-Dade County and discovered 62 undelivered ballots. On Tuesday morning, attorneys for USPS said postal workers had finished sorting through the backlog.

Scott Pierce, the Special Agent in Charge for the USPS Inspector General’s Southern Area Field Office, told the Herald on Sunday that his team planned to sweep “several” other mail facilities in Miami-Dade County to search for undelivered ballots before Election Day, but he didn’t disclose how many facilities or which ones would be searched. On Monday, Pierce said investigators had “not found anything major at this point” at other facilities.