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U.S. Postal Service Likely Lost Thousands of Mail-In Ballots, Election Official Says

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October 30, 2020

A Pittsburgh, Pa., election official said Wednesday that the U.S. Postal Service has potentially lost thousands of mail-in ballots, CBS 2 Pittsburgh reported.

Leslie Osche, chair of the Butler County board of commissioners, said that, based on the number of phone calls and emails her office has received, thousands of voters have likely not yet received their mail-in ballots.

With just days until the election, her office is scrambling to get new ballots out to voters.

In the meantime, election officials have advised voters to fill out provisional ballots in-person at polling locations on Election Day.

The Postal Service said it was unaware of any delay in services and that it's working with the county board of elections to justify the problem. The Pennsylvania Department of State has asked the county and post office to investigate the error.

The possible mixup is just the latest mail-in voting problem in Pennsylvania, a battleground state in an election in which record numbers of people will vote by mail. Earlier this month, an IT outage shut down the Pennsylvania State Department website, preventing residents from registering to vote and applying for mail-in ballots. Federal investigators are also looking into an incident in Luzerne County in which nine mail-in ballots were found in a dumpster.

President Trump narrowly leads Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in Pennsylvania, according to the most recent Trafalgar Group poll.