Election Red Flag: Postal Service watchdog warns some mailed ballots may be delayed, not counted

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) failed to deliver political and election mail on time between 2% and 3% of the time during the 2024 primaries and the mail service’s chief watchdog warns in a new audit that some mailed ballots might be delayed or not counted in the November election because workers aren’t following required procedures.

“We found that Postal Service personnel did not always comply with policy and procedures regarding all clear certifications, Election and Political Mail logs, and audit checklists,” the Postal Service Inspector General warned in a report made public this week. “In addition, we identified processes and policies that could pose a risk of delays in the processing and delivery of Election and Political Mail.

“Further, we identified issues related to some Delivering for America operational changes that pose a risk of individual ballots not being counted,” the report reviewed by Just the News added.

You can read the full report here.

The chief internal watchdog made ten recommendations for the Postal Service to improve performance and make sure it doesn’t fail to deliver for the fall presidential election but warned that USPS managers disagreed with two of the solutions.

“Opportunities exist for the Postal Service to improve readiness for timely processing and delivery of Election and Political Mail for the 2024 general election,” the report concluded.

The inspector general said it studied the Postal Service’s compliance with its election mail requirements during the lead up to and completion of early primary elections from Dec. 1, 2023, through April 1, 2024.

It noted that while the mail service is committed to timely delivery, not all of the employees it audited at 15 mail processing facilities and 35 delivery units were following the rules and procedures. “We found 12 of 15 (80 percent) mail processing facilities did not complete all clear certifications according to policy” that ensures political mail got processed by daily required deadlines, the report said.

As a result, the audit found “between two and 220 ballots at the seven facilities after completion of the all clear process.”

Overall, ballots to voters were processed on time only on an average of 97.01 percent of the time, while ballots returned to election counting centers were processed about 98.17% of the time, the IG reported.

The National Conference of State Legislatures says that eight states, (California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington and the District of Columbia) allow all elections to be conducted entirely by mail; two states, (Nebraska and North Dakota) permit counties to opt into conducting elections by mail; nine states, (Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming) allow specific small elections to be conducted by mail; and four states, (Idaho, Minnesota, New Jersey and New Mexico) permit mostly-mail elections for certain small jurisdictions.

That means the two to three percent of ballots gone missing in the mail could add up to tens of thousands or more votes uncounted nationwide in the November election. Other election and political mailings weren’t processed on time about 2.5% of the time, according to a chart inside the report.

Among the issues flagged in the report were that postal employees didn’t keep required logs of processing ballots and election mail and there was “lack of management oversight and monitoring to ensure that Election Mail and Political Mail audit checklists were properly completed with accurate information.”