Michigan and thirteen other states are expected to request that a federal judge take steps to ensure mail-in ballots reach election officials on time.
The states held a status conference with Judge Stanley Bastian over the phone on Friday. At the time of this writing, the status conference was still ongoing.
A request for the conference was filed on Thursday in a Washington federal district court and promptly granted.
The conference is in regards to an “update regarding USPS’s consistently poor election mail performance data in certain regions.”
Michigan was part of a lawsuit earlier this year against the US Postal Service over changes made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that were impacting mail delivery.
Those changes included eliminating overtime for mail carriers, reducing post office hours, and removing post office boxes and even mail sorting equipment.
In September, Judge Bastian granted the request of Michigan and thirteen other states to block the changes, noting they created a “substantial possibility that many voters will be disenfranchised and the states may not be able to effectively, timely, accurately determine election outcomes.”
But, according to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, those delays have persisted.
“The postal service was ordered to do a number of different things so absentee ballots would not be delayed,” she said. “But unfortunately either those things did not occur or because they stripped out so many sorting machines obviously the delays remain.”
The delays, according to Nessel, are particularly bad in Detroit.
“Out of 67 cities that were evaluated Detroit was number 67 in terms of timeliness of mail delivery,” she said.
In the request for a conference with Judge Bastian, Detroit is singled out as having mail delivery performance scores for first-class mail that have fallen between 57%-84% in the past week. That means in some cases only 57% percent of ballots sent to election officials are making it within the 1-3 day performance standard set for the USPS.
Nationally, performance scores have hovered at about 93%.
“It’s likely we are going to request some further action be taken by the court to order the postal service to get those ballots delivered and get them delivered immediately,” Nessel said. “Understanding if they are received after 8 PM on November 3rd they cannot be counted and they won’t count.”
According to the conference request, Michigan and other plaintiff states spoke with counsel representing the Post Office earlier this week, seeking information about the scope and reasons for delays. The plaintiff states “have yet to receive a satisfactory response”.
“Plaintiffs believe that the ballot delays are, at least in part, the result of defendants’ failure to take ‘extraordinary measures’ to accelerate the delivery of ballots, as required by the injunction,” the request continued.
Plaintiff states, including Michigan, are expected to request the Post Office take additional steps before election day “to ensure that all duly cast votes are counted.”
It’s not clear what relief, if any, the judge will grant.