As more and more states rely on vote-by-mail ballots, more and more cities are forced to confront the issue of the reliability of the Postal Service – especially when ballots show up late with no way of verifying that they were mailed on time. Ohio is the latest state to confront this problem, according to a story from Ohio.com:
The late arrival of absentee ballots may be tied to postal service cuts.
The problem — which was much greater than in past elections — prompted the Summit County Board of Elections last month to schedule a Dec. 28 hearing and subpoena postal officials to answer questions about what caused the increase and how to prevent this from happening again. Board members think the problem was worsened because of the recent closure of Akron’s mail processing center. The closing means mail from the Akron area now goes to Cleveland before it returns to Akron for delivery.
The board members fear the problem could be amplified next year, when a much higher voter turnout is expected for the presidential election.
Summit County’s postmark problem has attracted statewide and national attention, with the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus calling for a statewide investigation, six postal officials (including the U.S. deputy postmaster) visiting Akron and Secretary of State Jon Husted sending out a survey Friday to all 88 counties to gauge the issue’s scope.
The postal service has said it will develop a policy on postmarking absentee ballots in light of the concerns that have been raised. David Van Allen, a postal service spokesman, said Friday that postal officials will meet next week with Husted to “work toward the best solution” to meet the state’s postmark requirement.”
No USPS officials showed up for a hearing the Summit County Board of Elections held Monday morning on the issue of nearly 900 absentee ballots not being counted because they lacked postmarks.
The elections board had subpoenaed both the Akron and Cleveland postmasters to appear at the hearing or requested that another postal official appear in their stead.
“This is certainly a big issue — an important issue for the voters of Summit County,” said Tim Gorbach, the board’s director. “For them to not come here, it’s disappointing.”
During the hearing, the board did, however, hear from two Cuyahoga County Board of Elections officials about their board’s experiences with postal issues. The Cuyahoga County board officials offered a potential solution involving an alternative method from traditional postmarks to verify that absentee ballots were mailed by the state deadline in future elections.
Though postal officials didn’t attend the hearing, they have met with Summit County elections board staff twice and had a conference call with them last week to discuss the concerns initially raised in November when the Summit board discovered that an abnormally high number of absentee ballots had to be thrown out because they lacked postmarks.
what! miss happy hour!
emergency call to help hillary with more bimbo eruptions…………they missed meeting because they had to do double duty because of bill cosby. oh those two bills can’t keep from schlonging people. kind of what po mismgt does to its customers when you come to think about it!
first of all postal management truly believe they have to answer to no one, if a citizen failed to show up after they have been subpoenaed they would be in jail.
They where busy working on closing more plants.
Whatever happened to revenue protection? The tools and thugs
don’t care, just get it out of our building. Not showing up for
the meeting just shows how the tools and thugs consider
themselves beyond reproach. Fire them all.
Again lack of management skills. So much for customer service again.
Sounds just like what the Postal Service always does, Ignore things that they do wrong! However, they are so concerned about making sure that the employees work like trained circus animals. Employees must be perfect, and on time. Everything must be done right. Management can, and does whatever they desire. And when management makes a bad decision, they receive a bonus. And if the decision is really awful, they are promoted! Management has a chance to increase mail volume and promote easier voting for the public. There is a right way, there is a wrong way, and then there is the Postal Services way!