- The USPS agreed to take several steps to ensure that ballots in the mail arrive on time before the second round of the Georgia Senate, the Washington Post reported.
- As part of the agreement between the agency and civil rights groups, the US Postal Service will treat ballots as express mail if they are at a processing plant within three days of the January 5 election.
- The postal service has been struggling to keep up with the massive volume of mail this year.
- The agency said the delays are due to the pandemic, with nearly a quarter of its employees sick or quarantined.
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The United States postal service has agreed to take steps to speed up the processing and delivery of ballots before the second round of elections in Georgia, after discussions with civil rights groups, the Washington Post reported.
The organization agreed to treat the ballots as express mail if they were still at a processing plant in the three days before the election. This means that the ballots in the mail would be delivered the next day. In addition, bills sent from a New York printer to the state would be speeded up and postal services would sweep the premises to ensure that no bills are lost.
In Atlanta, the USPS agreed to bypass processing factories and send ballots directly to vote counting centers.
The new policy is the result of challenges from groups such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Vote Forward.
The Atlanta constituency saw a low rate of ballots arriving in time for mail processing centers, the Post reported. Only 80.4% of the more than 150,000 ballots that have already been processed in that district were on time, but experts told the newspaper that the rate should be closer to 97%.
Across the country, a record number of ballot votes were recorded during the November general election, and civil rights groups expect Georgia, and especially the most populous and diverse Atlanta area, to outperform their own. records during runoff.
Two Democrats, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are working to overthrow Sens Republicans. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
This also comes amid high scrutiny by the United States Postal Service, after it determined it would be difficult to deliver an avalanche of packages by Christmas. In some cases, packages of mail are piled so high that it is difficult for employees to walk, packages are stopped in trucks for several days waiting to be separated and employees work up to 80 hours a week.
The agency said the delays were due to the coronavirus pandemic. Almost 25% or 19,000 of the agency’s 644,000 workers are ill or isolated due to COVID-19.
“Amidst the historic volume, the Post Office continues to make its network more flexible, including ensuring that the right equipment is available to classify, process and deliver a historic volume of mail and packages during this holiday season,” said Kim Frum, spokesman. Voice of the Postal Service said Insider.
“Our entire operations team, from pickup to processing and delivery, has worked all weekend and continues to work around the clock to deal with the historical volume.”