WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 05: U.S. Postmaster General Louis Dejoy arrives at a meeting at the office of Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) at the U.S. Capitol August 5, 2020 in Washington, DC. Negotiations between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for an agreement on how to move forward on a new relief package to help people and businesses weather the COVID-19 pandemic continue today at the U.S. Capitol. (Image: Getty)
On Friday afternoon, video footage of the Princeton post office in south Miami-Dade County surfaced, revealing dozens of pieces of election mail that had yet to be delivered. The video came from State Rep. Kionne McGhee (D-Florida), the outgoing Democratic leader of the Florida House. He tweeted out a video clip that showed several bins of mail stacked up at the Princeton post office, with the caption, “Raw footage of mailroom in post office here in Miami Dade. Source revealed ‘mail in ballots are within these piled up in bins on the floor. Mail has been sitting for over week!'”
The timeframe was confirmed by Mark Travers, the South Florida president for the National Association of Letter Carriers, who said he first learned of the backlog on October 21, well over a week ago. Travers stated that the observed backlog has since prompted officials to consider sending out more trucks and asking postal carriers to work the maximum number of hours that their contract permits in order to solve this problem by Tuesday.
On Saturday morning, special agents with the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General announced that they had discovered 48 pieces of election mail in the Princeton post office on Friday afternoon. Specifically, 42 of them were ballots that had yet to be delivered, and the remaining six had already been filled out and were then brought to the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections Friday night.
In response to the discovery of unattended ballots, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle “requested that all postal distribution centers be audited and any and all ballots that may remain in these centers be immediately transported to the Department of Elections.” Delivering these ballots is not only crucial because of Florida’s swing state status, but the state requires that all ballots be received by Election Day in order to be counted, providing a heightened sense of urgency to make sure these ballots are delivered on time.
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