A federal judge ordered the Postal Service on Thursday to continue its sweep of mail facilities to check for undelivered ballots in states that have extended vote delivery deadlines, such as North Carolina and Pennsylvania, NBC News reports.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of Washington, D.C., ordered the sweeps to continue until the end of the day Friday to ensure that all the mailed ballots are counted. The order, the result of a lawsuit brought by voter advocacy groups, is intended to mitigate concerns that a number of ballots in the Postal Service's care potentially were not delivered.
Concern was raised Wednesday about ballots that were scanned into the Postal Service system but did not get outgoing scans. The agency said that in an attempt to deliver the ballots more quickly, it bypassed the outgoing delivery scan in some cases.
