BOWLING GREEN, Ohio (13abc Action News) – Hundreds of voters in northwest Ohio say they have not received their absentee ballots in the mail.
The ballots were sent from Lucas, Wood and five other counties October 12. But twenty days later, many still have not been delivered.
Tuesday, Ohio Secretary of State, Jon Husted, visited the board of elections office in Wood County. He says voting has gone smoothly in Ohio except for this absentee ballot problem.
Husted puts the blame squarely on the postal system, saying, “It’s completely unacceptable. The post office needs to do a better job.”
Now, local elections officials are scrambling to make sure absentee voters get a ballot.
A spot check by The Dispatch showed more than 700 ballots must be reissued, including 140 in Defiance County, more than 100 in Lucas and Ottawa counties and and 60 in Fulton County. Not all affected counties were checked. For example, Wood County has mailed 281 new absentee ballots after receiving complaints that many of the originals sent out Oct. 12 had not been received by voters. “We made a decision to reissue a ballot if it had been more than 14 days,” said Terry Burton, director of the Wood County Board of Elections. “We want to make sure these people get their ballots.” The missing ballots were reported in two ZIP codes in Wood County, as well as with those sent to out-of-state recipients, Burton said. The problem apparently occurred in a Detroit area substation of the U.S. Post Office that handled tens of thousands of absentee ballots that were sent out at the same time from boards of elections in northwest Ohio. Gina Kaczala, director of the Lucas County Board of Elections, said the board mailed more than 9,000 absentees initially, and so far has reissued about 100 with more expected.
blame mail processing at the plant.
We can blame and we do blame this abysmal failure to handle election ballots and voting information properly on management. In fact, one can draw a line directly to Headquarters and the PMG.
This comes as a result of closing plants that should not have been closed, refusing to hire help at a sensible pace, leaving job vacancies open for months at a time, allowing offices to run so far behind that in Berkeley, California some CCA’s have been out at 2:30 AM delivering mail.
Megan Brennan was one of the chief architects of plant closures and consolidations that have crippled service nationwide. Her blind stewardship is just one more example of what happens when incompetent people are promoted within the management system due to connections to other higher ups and other factors I don’t even want to think about. She has lied to various Congresspersons and Senators about considering not closing plants and doing it anyway and has done nothing to alleviate the chronic help shortage.
And Christmas beckons. If you plan to send packages in the mail, you better do it right now. The system is so fucked up it will take a very long time for packages to arrive.
The unions, especially the NALC and NLRCA should be much more vocal about the help shortages. They need to be highly visible and put the blame right where it belongs. This problem isn’t unsolvable. But common sense does not prevail in Management World. The USPS knows it’s facing retirements of employees next year in the tens of thousands as these people are now eligible to leave. I am done in a month where I’ll be having surgery and recouping from that to fill out the rest of my time, and because I started my paperwork six months out, the farthest out you can file, hopefully my paperwork will be processed without much hassle. The TSP is filed separately, which is a good thing. But next year we will have a huge backlog of retirement files that will be screwed up, returned and otherwise mishandled because there is only one large office that does claims for the entire country.
For the good of the USPS, I hope Brennan is removed by Hillary Clinton, who appears to be the probable winner in the election.
That is funny, as a carrier, I used to get all kinds of mail for the elections to sort.
I just got 2 pieces today. The first this year in Michigan.
Fire the toolbags that run the plants. These so called
experts couldn’t find their way out of a wet paper bag
even if it had openings at both ends. Article 3 should be
amended to read “The Right TO Mismanage”. Unethical
immoral thugs
Mr. Husted should in fact blame his Ratpublican party for the delay! In 2006 Congress passed legislation forcing the Postal Service to pre pay it’s health care costs. And ex President Forrest Gump signed the act! In response the Postal Service made cuts in various services. So because of political decisions made by Congress, Postal services aren’t what they used to be! I advise the state of Ohio to pre fund their health care costs. If it’s good enough for the Postal Service, it’s good enough for the state of Ohio! The secretary of state should do a little research before he babbles to news services.