Judge orders USPS to do twice-daily sweeps for missing ballots. Election results hang in balance.

As the U.S. Postal Service races to deliver the last of more than 65 million ballots cast in the general election, a pair of court orders issued Thursday demand extra steps to ensure all remaining ballots arrive by their state deadlines.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan directed mail processing facilities in each state with an extended ballot deadline to immediately begin conducting two sweeps a day to identify and deliver ballots and submit a report on the number of ballots found and delivered. Although the cut-off for ballots in 29 states was Election Day, 21 other states will accept them for a number of days after the election.

Sullivan is overseeing cases filed in Washington D.C. by voters groups, including the NAACP. The lawsuits seek to ensure timely delivery of the unprecedented number of ballots. On Tuesday, Sullivan had ordered a similar sweep after the USPS said its delivery performance had dropped over the past five days.

The closely contested presidential election between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden – as well as other still-undecided races – highlight the need for timely delivery of any outstanding ballots, attorneys for voters’ groups told Sullivan in a hearing Thursday.

In addition to the sweeps, the judge also ordered the USPS to submit additional reports for facilities in North Carolina and Pennsylvania – two states where the margins are close and votes are still being counted.

At least 10,000 ballots continued to flow through the postal service system on Monday and Tuesday, according to data filed in court by the USPS. The agency reported it placed 5,441 ballots into express mail for delivery across the nation on Monday and another 5,177 on Election Day.

The USPS reported it reached a high of 1,461 extra delivery trips on Sunday, then made another 831 extra trips on Monday and 768 on Tuesday. Ballot delivery continued on Wednesday, court records show. The records don’t indicate how long the ballots had been in the system or how many were mailed by voters at the last minute.

The reports provided by the USPS this week indicate a need for “continued attention” in states where ballots are still being accepted, attorney Shankar Duraiswamy, representing Vote Forward, told the judge.

Kevin Bray, the USPS’ executive in charge of 2020 election mail processing, and nearly a dozen directors of mail processing centers participated in the court hearing via Zoom Thursday to answer questions. Bray told the judge postal workers have taken extraordinary measures to get ballots “out of the building” and “delivered by every means possible.”

However, during questioning, Bray said there’s no mechanism available to track every single piece of mail. The agency operates under the assumption that facility managers are executing the agency’s plans to deliver every ballot, he said, including “crawling under machines and through equipment to make sure we’re doing everything we can to deliver the ballots.”

Record absentee and early voting

Nationwide, voters requested more than 92 million absentee ballots and returned at least 65.3 million of them, according to the U.S. Elections Project. Many of them were returned at the last minute.

Chicago resident Kr Troutman said she stopped at a post office late on Election Day and was shocked to see someone dropping off a mail-in ballot.

“It seemed kind of weird,” Troutman told USA TODAY on Thursday. “I didn’t know they were accepting them that late.” She said she voted in person.

In Illinois, where Biden already was projected the winner, ballots postmarked on Election Day are accepted for up to 14 days.

Early voting, either at the polls or by mail-in ballot, has become more popular over the past 20 years. In 2012, more than 46 million voters cast ballots either by mail or in early voting, according to the Pew Research Center.

Given the surge in mail-in ballots this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the virus’ impact on postal employees, voters rights groups and Congress began asking over the summer whether the USPS was making the necessary preparations. A missed deadline is the second most common reason for rejected absentee ballots across the U.S., behind non-matching signatures.

In a report to a U.S. House committee this week, the postal service stated its 630,000 employees had processed 135 pieces of election mail, including blank and completed ballots, and 4.6 billion pieces of political and election-related mail since Sept. 4. That’s a 76.5% increase over the 2016 election cycle.

Sullivan reiterated his admiration for the postal workers efforts. “Nothing stops the postal system,” he said. “I’m deeply appreciative of that.”

The American Postal Workers Union is closely following the court proceedings. From their perspective, the bigger story is the successful delivery of the more than 65 million ballots.

“As postal workers we’re extremely proud that with great integrity and passion and a lot of hard work we provided access to the ballot box for tens of millions of voters,” said Union president Mark Dimondstein, a retired postal employee. Postal workers “moved heaven and earth”, he said, “as a civic duty.”

Outside the courtroom, other ballot concerns with the postal service cropped up this week.

In New York, mail carrier Brandon Wilson was arrested by Customs and Border Protection at the Canadian border with 813 pieces of mail in his trunk, including three election ballots, the Postal Inspection Service stated in a criminal complaint.

In Tennessee, authorities are investigating break-ins, attempted break-ins or vandalism the postal service reported at seven post offices in the greater Nashville area overnight Sunday and early Monday.

Meanwhile, Trump has filed lawsuits in several states to stop the counting of mail-in ballots, especially in states where they could hand victory to his opponent.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: USPS ordered to keep searching for mail-in ballots, vote count goes on