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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) said about 1,700 ballots in Pennsylvania had been identified at processing facilities during two raids Thursday and were being handed over to election officials.
In a court filing early Friday, the USPS said 1,076 ballots had been found at the USPS Processing and Distribution Center in Philadelphia. Approximately 300 were found at the Pittsburgh processing center, 266 at a Lehigh Valley facility and others found at other Pennsylvania processing centers.
Ballots must be received by Friday night in Pennsylvania to be counted. The vote for the president of the United States remains extremely close and Pennsylvania is one of the states that remains undecided.
About 500 ballots were also discovered in North Carolina during the raids, the USPS said Friday.
United States District Judge Emmet Sullivan had ordered on Thursday two raids a day at USPS facilities that serve states with extended ballot receipt deadlines, as votes were still being counted in the states of battle of the United States.
Some states, including Nevada and North Carolina, are counting ballots received after Election Day as long as they are postmarked Tuesday.
Attorneys said in a court hearing Thursday that the USPS had delivered about 150,000 ballots on Wednesday.
“The vast majority were destined for the postmarked states and would be delivered on time under state election law,” USPS said.
Sullivan said processing centers must conduct sweeps in the morning and then in the afternoon “to ensure that identified local ballots can be delivered that day.”
Sullivan issued a separate order requiring USPS to “coordinate with all local County Boards of Elections in North Carolina or Pennsylvania” to deliver all ballots “by 5:00 pm local time in North Carolina or Pennsylvania” on Friday. .
Election officials were still counting ballots in battlefield states after polls closed Tuesday in one of the most unusual elections in U.S. history due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Democratic candidate Joe Biden was drastically cutting the tracks of Republican President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania and Georgia. The former vice president retained tight margins in Nevada and Arizona.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Robert Birsel)
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