Thousands of Georgia ballots may miss election deadline due to USPS delays
The USPS delay could potentially disenfranchise Georgia voters
It’s safe to say the country has its eyes on Georgia right now.
The Tuesday Georgia runoff election date is here but some mail-in ballots won’t make it in time to be counted. Filings in federal court show that US Postal Service standards are below average in Atlanta, according to NBC LX.
At this time, tens of thousands of ballots are still in transit despite them being mailed 3-5 days before the election day deadline and includes ballots mailed in before New Years’. According to the same filings, only 76 percent of the ballots were processed on time as of December 21 in the Atlanta metro region which is also the second-largest majority Black metro area in the country.
Read More: Trump beefs with Georgia Republican officials amid election drama
It is unclear how many ballots were recently sent in but voting officials received only about 38,000 over the weekend. The stakes of the Georgia runoffs are high because whomever wins could impact which political party would have majority power in the Senate.
After civil rights organizations disputed the postal service’s cost cutting measures, they agreed to treat ballots as Priority Express mail which promises they should be delivered within one day.
A USPS spokesperson claimed, “Election Mail and ballots have always been prioritized and are performing well above other product lines.”
But despite the comment, the source discovered that some votes in swing states such as Georgia were not counted by November’s Election Day. More than 5,000 legal votes were rejected by Election Day in Georgia alone.
Read More: As Georgians vote in senate runoffs, Trump’s election offense looms
As previously reported by theGrio, the Senate races come down to two contests: Sen. David Perdue and Democrat candidate Jon Ossoff and Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock. Runoffs sparked between the candidates last month because none of them earned enough votes to win.
The state has already seen a whopping turnout. 1,470,764 Georgia voters have already cast their vote via absentee ballot or early in-person voting.
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