By EMILY OPILO BALTIMORE SUN
An audit of U.S. Postal Service performance during this year’s primary election season has found 68,000 pieces of political mail sat untouched at a Baltimore mail processing facility for five days ahead of the June 2 primary.
The audit published Monday says the mail, sent May 12, “sat unprocessed” for five days before being discovered by management at the facility.
Baltimore was in the midst of several contentious political races at the time, including those for mayor, comptroller and City Council president. Numerous candidates for those offices spent thousands of dollars on campaign mailers in an attempt to sway voters in close primaries.
Ballots destined for those voters also were in the mail stream during the window when the political mail sat at the facility, but the audit specifically stated the delayed pieces were not ballots. “This was First-Class campaign mail from a political candidate,” according to a footnote in the report.
“That might be the reason why I didn’t get a lot of votes,” Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young quipped Wednesday when asked about the audit at a news conference.
Young placed fifth in the Democratic race despite his incumbency and sizable spending.
The evaluation was performed by the Postal Service’s inspector general in an effort to look for improvements that could be made ahead of the November election. Seven postal service areas across the country were examined including Baltimore; Brooklyn, New York; Charleston, West Virginia, and Portland, Oregon.
The Postal Service has faced intense criticism from Democrats across the country who fear disinvestment by the agency could create problems with what is expected to be a largely vote-by-mail election this fall due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Widespread delays already have been reported with Postal Service deliveries — including in the Baltimore area — as a result of cost-cutting measures and a change at the system’s helm. Earlier this year, new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy imposed significant overtime restrictions for employees of the service, which has long lost money.
Last month, postal workers revealed that mail sorting machines were being removed and decommissioned at postal facilities across the country, including four delivery bar code sorters at the Baltimore mail processing facility, and two more in Linthicum. The machines being removed are typically used for election mail, including ballots.
In late July, the Postal Service warned 46 states, including Maryland, that the states’ deadlines for voters to make absentee ballot requests might not provide “sufficient time” for the ballots to be mailed to voters and then arrive at election offices with the required Election Day postmark.
The Maryland elections board voted last month to move that deadline to Oct. 20, although that is still is one day short of the 15 days before Election Day that the postal service says is the minimum time span.
Numerous problems were reported with Maryland’s June primary, which was the state’s first attempt at a largely vote-by-mail election, but none were blamed on the Postal Service. Ballots were delivered fewer than two weeks before the primary to voters in Baltimore City and Montgomery County because they were not mailed by May 8, as election officials had said they would be.
The state blamed the error on its Minnesota-based ballot printing vendor, SeaChange. SeaChange said the problem was the fault of Maryland election officials for delivering voter lists a week late.
State election officials were effusive in their praise for the Postal Service at the time, which arranged overnight shipments to ferry the ballots from Minnesota to Maryland.
“The Postal Service has been amazing,” the state’s deputy administrator of elections, Nikki Charlson, said in May. “They have been driving trucks through the night.”
Former Maryland deputy attorney general Thiru Vignarajah’s mayoral campaign spent heavily on sending out multi-page, glossy mailers outlining detailed policy proposals ahead of the primary.
”We were really proud of our mail program and it’s certainly disappointing to hear that it may not have gotten through,” said Vignarajah, a Democrat who finished fourth.
“It is really disturbing that the postal system has become a political football,” Vignarajah said.
If you liked this post you’ll love our daily newsletter, EnviroPolitics. It’s packed with the latest news, commentary and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
