'Someone may have to pay a price' for USPS's refusal to sweep for ballots, judge says

Postmaster General DeJoy.
(Image credit: Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)

The United States Postal Service refused to listen to U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, and he isn't happy about it.

After the USPS revealed more than 300,000 ballots had entered postal processing plants but subsequently failed to receive "exit scans," indicating they might have been misplaced within the mail system, Sullivan ordered the Postal Service to perform a final sweep for those ballots. But the USPS said Tuesday night it wouldn't follow Sullivan's order in time to ensure the ballots in 15 critical states were accounted for before polls closed.

In a hearing Wednesday morning, a Department of Justice attorney representing the USPS told Sullivan it was "not operationally possible" to conduct the sweep, but that the USPS plants did try their best to ensure "ballots were expedited as quickly as possible."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
See more

But Sullivan wasn't standing for the USPS's "11th hour" decision not to comply, he said. "Someone may have to pay a price for that," Sullivan said, namely Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump appointee who has come under fire for mismanagement ahead of an election expecting an unprecedented number of absentee ballots. "The postmaster's going to have to be deposed or appear before me. I'm not going to forget it," he added.

Sullivan and the DOJ lawyer then set up a 1:30 p.m. EST testimony from Kevin Bray, the head of mail processing for the USPS.

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Kathryn Krawczyk

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.