The U.S. Postal Service found 815 mail-in ballots in Texas processing facilities on Wednesday.
The ballots were delivered to county election offices after a U.S. district judge ordered an inspection of the state’s mail processing facilities that were postmarked by Tuesday.
Judge Emmet Sullivan instructed the postal service to file a report on the steps taken to deliver the in-mail ballots by the state’s vote receipt deadline.
Texas law states mail-in ballots must be received by 7 p.m. local time on Election Day if they’re not postmarked, or 5 p.m. the following day as long as it’s postmarked by 7 p.m. on election day.
Sullivan ordered two searches of the mail processing plants by 3 p.m. Central time.
Texas was called for incumbent President Donald Trump earlier this week. The Lone Star state has 38 Electoral College votes, second only to California’s 55.
The Texas order came after Sullivan ordered the Postal Service’s law enforcement arm to conduct a series of sweeps for undelivered mail ballots across a dozen postal facilities in the U.S., including in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Michigan.
Postal officials were told to complete the inspections by 3 p.m. Eastern Time, but lawyers for the USPS told Sullivan in a court filing that the agency was not able to complete the sweeps by the deadline.
In a statement to Newsweek earlier this week, USPS spokesperson David Partenheimer disputed suggestions that the USPS was not working quickly enough to process mailed ballots.
“Beginning in January 2020, the U.S. Postal Service began ‘all clear’ sweeps to ensure Political Mail and Election Mail, which includes voter registration materials, requests for absentee ballots and ballots themselves, were not left behind. These efforts have intensified as we’ve moved closer to Election Day.
“Since October 29, the Inspection Service has been conducting daily reviews at all 220 facilities that process ballots.”
Partenheimer added that the “total mail volume surpassed 4.5 billion mailpieces for Political Mail and Election Mail tracked, representing an increase of 114 percent compared to the 2016 election cycle” in the past 14 months.
Thirteen undelivered ballots were found in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and they were delivered to local boards of elections before the count. A further three more ballots were discovered in North Carolina on Wednesday, which will also be counted.
A record number of Americans have used mail-in ballots as a result of COVID-19. However, Trump has repeatedly called for people to cast their votes in person, claiming without evidence that voting by post will lead to voter fraud.
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