Public Pressure And Lawsuits Kept USPS From Handing Trump The Election. Here’s How.

Voters in some key states were put in a very precarious position as the 2020 election approached. On the one hand, conservative legislatures and courts implemented rules that required mailed ballots to be received by Election Day, regardless of postmark. Meanwhile, as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic and changes implemented by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the mail experienced rolling delays from which it still has not fully recovered. 

There was therefore widespread concern that thousands of mailed ballots — in an election where a record-shattering 65.5 million people voted absentee due to the coronavirus pandemic — might not arrive in time. History might hinge on some mundane postal delays. 

But in the end, those delays did not result in thousands of ballots getting lost in the mail or arriving too late to count. Postal workers doing final sweeps of their systems have found just a few ballots — in most cases, they number in the double digits — that were lost or left behind… 

What made the difference, experts say, was enormous public pressure, multiple lawsuits, scrutiny from the courts, urgent efforts to urge voters to mail their ballots as early as possible, and extraordinary measures taken by the agency itself and its legions of dedicated postal workers…