중요뉴스 Re:A backlog of mail is piling up at a Miami-Dade post office as Election Day nears

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A backlog of mail is piling up at a Miami-Dade post office as Election Day nears

BY ROB WILE AND

 

AARON LEIBOWITZ

OCTOBER 30, 2020 04:54 PM, 

UPDATED 44 MINUTES AGO

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Miami-Dade sends 530,000 mail ballots for Nov. 3 election

Miami-Dade County’s elections department is sending a record number of mail ballots to voters Thursday ahead of the Nov. 3 general election. BY JOSÉ A. IGLESIAS

Just days before the Nov. 3 election, mail delivery is being delayed at times in a critical Florida district, South Florida’s letter carrier union chief said Friday — and extraordinary measures are being considered to alleviate the bottleneck.

Mail that should already have been delivered has been piling up at the Princeton post office in South Miami-Dade County near Homestead, according to Mark Travers, South Florida president for the National Association of Letter Carriers. Travers said he first learned of the backup more than a week ago, on Wednesday, Oct. 21. He raised the matter in a call that Friday with other Florida mail officials, who said they would address the issue.

A week later, it appeared the backlog remained, Travers said. He has since been told that additional resources, including more trucks, would be sent to the area, and that carriers would be asked to work to their “contractual maximum” to get the mail out.

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He also said officials are now considering delivering mail this Sunday to alleviate the backlog.

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“They said they’ll be current by [Saturday],” Travers said. “I’m not sure I believe that.”

In a statement at 9 p.m. Friday, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle said she was troubled by the “massive” delay in mail delivery at the South Dade facility. She said she has asked the U.S. Postal Service to inspect every mail distribution center in the county and immediately take any ballots that remain there to the county’s elections department.

Fernández Rundle said she was working with the elections department and the USPS inspector general’s office “to make sure that all ballots are accounted for and all votes are counted.”

“I have offered the full resources of the State Attorney’s Elections Task Force to Elections Supervisor Cristina White and South Florida’s Special Agent in Charge of the United States Postal Inspector’s Office Antonio Gomez,” Fernández Rundle said.

Representatives for USPS and the USPS inspector general’s office could not immediately be reached for comment Friday night. Miami-Dade State Attorney spokesman Ed Griffith said the office has asked for, but can’t order, an audit of the county’s postal facilities.