The Department of Justice found a “small number” of military ballots that were accidentally “discarded.”
The Office of the U.S. Attorney and the FBI’s Scranton Resident Office, which began the investigation on Monday at the request of the Luzerne County district attorney, found seven “discarded” military ballots that were cast for President Trump and two others “had been resealed inside their appropriate envelopes by Luzerne elections staff prior to recovery by the FBI and the contents of those 2 ballots are unknown,” the DOJ announced in a revised statement on Thursday.
The initial statement from DOJ said all nine ballots were cast for Trump.
The Justice Department also said that some of the recovered ballots “can be attributed to specific voters and some cannot.” The agency did not provide details about where the “discarded” ballots were and what specifically happened to them.
The update on the investigation was around the same time White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany noted during her briefing that the “cast aside” ballots were found in Pennsylvania. She also referenced the report that police in Greenville, Wisconsin, found three trays of mail, which included ballots, in a ditch near Appleton International Airport.
The issue of mail-in voting has been a hot subject of debate as the November election comes closer. Given the coronavirus pandemic, Democrats have sought to mail ballots to every voter, while Trump and Republicans have said doing so would be risking the integrity of the election results.
Democrats have accused Trump and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy of working to undermine the Postal Service and of hampering its ability to handle the amount of mail that mass ballots would entail. Since DeJoy took over as the postmaster general, he has implemented an array of changes, such as the decision to prohibit overtime and to curtail late trips for mail carriers that ensure on-time delivery.
His testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee in August led to the chairwoman, New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, to issue a subpoena for information about the removal of mail-sorting machines and mailboxes and other “policies and practices” that might be slowing mail delivery.
