Pennsylvania Postal Problems Could Conjure Election Night Chaos

As we approach election night here in the United States, a few very disconcerting storylines are beginning to emerge around the nation.

First and foremost, it appears that the media is pushing the idea that incumbent President Donald Trump is playing defense, hoping just to maintain the sort of electoral college pull that he had back in 2016.  Of course, the polling back in that fateful election had gotten it all wrong as well, and soon, election experts were forced to contemplate the very real possibility of a silent majority making all the difference.

Then there’s the idea that Donald Trump’s paths to victory are much narrower than Joe Biden’s, with many of the mainstream news stations agreeing that the Commander in Chief needs to win either Pennsylvania or Florida in order to have any shot at election.

While this may be true, it put a whole lot of pressure on officials to get it right in The Keystone State.

Unfortunately, a new bit of drama has emerged in Pennsylvania this week.

Timely mail delivery across Pennsylvania took a drastic turn for the worse in just the last two weeks amid a glut of voting by mail, according to U.S. Postal Service data filed Wednesday in federal court.

In Philadelphia, 42% of all first-class mail is taking longer than five days to be delivered. For comparison, that figure was 33% two weeks ago and just 13% in January, before a series of changes handed down by the Trump administration led to a national slowdown.

Central Pennsylvania, the subject of a PennLive investigation last week, also saw a sharp decline. At the start of the year, just 7% of mail failed to meet the 5-day standard. Today, more than 30% of mail is being substantially delayed.

The delays were obvious enough already that state officials advised voters Tuesday to hand-deliver mail-in ballots rather than risk missing the deadline for votes to be counted. That was before the USPS released the latest data, in accordance with a court order in a federal lawsuit lodged by a voting advocacy group.