U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan is a full-on hero of this election, and he is going to do everything in his power to prevent the Trump sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) from disenfranchising any voter. He's been monitoring the USPS delivery performance on a daily basis and on Tuesday, he determined that too many districts have been failing.
So he's ordered Postal Service inspectors to conduct sweeps of processing facilities in Central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Detroit, Colorado/Wyoming, Atlanta, Houston, Alabama, Northern New England (Maine and New Hampshire), Greater South Carolina, South Florida, Lakeland (Wisconsin), and Arizona. His order directs inspectors to "sweep the facilities between 12:30 PM EST and 3:00 PM EST to ensure that no ballots have been held up and that any identified ballots are immediately sent out for delivery." He ordered that the USPS must file a status update "certifying compliance" and "that sweeps were conducted and that no ballots were left behind." That has to happen by 4:30 PM EST, and further, the USPS must "identify the 27 processing centers at which the [Office of Inspector General] was onsite and the list of facilities that the Postal Inspectors have observed since October 19, 2020." He is not letting Trump's USPS team off the hook.
Most of the states in the order do not allow counting of ballots received after Election Day, and most have had delays in first-class mail delivery in their reports to Sullivan over the last several days. In Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court has ordered that ballots can get there three days after the election and still be counted. But that order is subject to further legal challenges. In Texas, ballots received by 5 PM the day after the election can be counted if they are postmarked on or before Election Day.
These ballots have to get there to be counted. Sullivan, a Clinton appointee to the Washington, D.C. District Court, is using his power to make that happen. You might remember him from another high-profile legal battle this year: He's the judge who refuses to let Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser—or the Trump Justice Department that's trying to save him—off the hook.
Be a democracy hero, too. Get out the vote. Humiliate Donald Trump. Win the Senate. And protect your vote, especially if you're in a battleground state.
