The U.S. Postal Service still isn’t processing election mail on time, even after being ordered by judges to halt disruptive changes like banning worker overtime and late delivery trips, Pennsylvania’s attorney general told a judge.
USPS data show the postal agency’s performance levels are down more than 5% from where they were before the changes took effect in July and “continue to be lower than at any point in 2020,” Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a federal court filing Monday in Philadelphia.
“Despite being subject to multiple injunctions, defendants have not improved their service performance,” said Shapiro, who has asked U.S. District Judge Gerald Austin McHugh to appoint an independent monitor to ensure the USPS abides by court orders.
According to Shapiro, who’s leading one of three multistate suits, USPS compliance with rules about election-mail processing and daily delivery is supposed to be at 100%. But USPS data shows compliance is as low as 85% in one division and some units aren’t reporting figures at all, he said.
Shapiro also said that late and extra trips by USPS mail carriers, which are supposed to be reinstated under the injunction, have barely nudged up and are nowhere near pre-July levels, suggesting more could be done to improve performance.