Federal judge: Mailing misleading voter information constitutes irreparable harm to Colorado

A fed­er­al judge on Mon­day upheld his order that the U.S. Postal Ser­vice stop deliv­er­ing fly­ers with what the state says is mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion on vot­ing in Col­orado, even though the Postal Ser­vice says about 75% of those fly­ers already have been delivered.

Between about 1.8 and 2.4 mil­lion post­cards were deliv­ered to Col­orado res­i­dents last week before U.S. Dis­trict Court Judge William J. Mar­tinez issued a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order at 6:55 p.m. Sat­ur­day stop­ping the mail­ings, accord­ing to court fil­ings Sun­day and Monday.

Mar­tinez on Mon­day refused the Postal Service’s request to lift the restrain­ing order, in part because the order is still stop­ping more than 555,000 notices from being delivered.

“The immi­nent dis­tri­b­u­tion of false and mis­lead­ing vot­ing infor­ma­tion to over half a mil­lion Col­orado house­holds con­sti­tutes irrepara­ble harm,” Mar­tinez wrote in the decision.

USPS Mail­er

The judge’s order to stop deliv­ery of the fly­ers was prompt­ed by a law­suit filed by Col­orado Sec­re­tary of State Jena Gris­wold, who argued the mail­ers pre­sent­ed mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion about vot­ing in Col­orado. The mail­ers say vot­ers must request a mail-in bal­lot, but in Col­orado, every reg­is­tered vot­er receives a mail bal­lot and vot­ers do not have to specif­i­cal­ly request those ballots.

The Postal Ser­vice argues that the mail­ers, which are being dis­trib­uted nation­al­ly, are not mis­lead­ing because they tell read­ers to check their local juris­dic­tions for details on how to vote, and because they are intend­ed to pro­vide only gen­er­al infor­ma­tion that encour­ages vot­ing, not to detail state laws.

Gris­wold said Mon­day that she learned about the mail­ers from anoth­er state on Thurs­day, and that she on Fri­day con­firmed with Postal Ser­vice lead­er­ship in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., that the mail­ers would be sent in Colorado.

“We asked them not to send it; they refused,” she said. Her office was told only lim­it­ed mail­ings had gone out in Col­orado on Fri­day, and that addi­tion­al mail­ings would not go out until Mon­day, she said, adding she was “pret­ty shocked” to see wide­spread reports Sat­ur­day from res­i­dents say­ing that they’d received the mailers.

“The truth is we do not know and the Postal Ser­vice has been say­ing dif­fer­ent infor­ma­tion,” she said of the num­ber of fly­ers sent. She said she believes the law­suit is still a nec­es­sary step to stop the remain­der of the fly­ers from being sent.

“All we know is that there is mis­in­for­ma­tion, and I do think it is still worth it to have them stop spread­ing it,” she said.

The 75% of mail­ers that the Postal Ser­vice says they’ve deliv­ered includes about 1.7 mil­lion post­cards deliv­ered from the Den­ver dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter, anoth­er 171,000 deliv­ered from Grand Junc­tion, plus up to 612,000 fly­ers deliv­ered from a dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter in Albu­querque — although the Postal Ser­vice could not say exact­ly how many of those 612,000 post­cards went to Col­orado res­i­dents and how many went to New Mex­i­co residents.

The about 1.7 mil­lion fly­ers sent from Den­ver rep­re­sent­ed about 75% of the fly­ers that dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter received, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. Of the remain­ing 25% of fly­ers from the Den­ver dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter, about 15% — or just over 333,000 post­cards — were suc­cess­ful­ly pulled from the mail deliv­ery process Sat­ur­day, accord­ing to motions filed on Sun­day. The last 10% — about 222,000 post­cards — were already in the process of being deliv­ered, the fil­ing said, and could not be eas­i­ly sep­a­rat­ed from oth­er mail.

On Mon­day, U.S. Attor­ney Jason Dunn said in a court fil­ing that the Postal Ser­vice is attempt­ing to man­u­al­ly remove the remain­ing post­cards from the mail pro­cess­ing sys­tem. On Sun­day, near­ly 30 USPS employ­ees  inspect­ed mil­lions of pieces of mail and removed the post­cards over the course of about 20 hours, he said. Post offices in the state also have been advised of the judge’s order to stop deliv­ery, and mail car­ri­ers have been instruct­ed not to deliv­er the post­cards to any customers.

Col­orado state offi­cials said in court fil­ings that the Postal Service’s claim that 75% of the fly­ers have been deliv­ered con­tra­dicts infor­ma­tion postal offi­cials pre­vi­ous­ly gave to the state, as well as state­ments they made publicly.

Postal Ser­vice spokesman David Rupert told The Den­ver Post on Sat­ur­day that the fly­ers had gone out to a hand­ful of com­mu­ni­ties, total­ing in the thou­sands of house­holds. He did not imme­di­ate­ly return a request for com­ment Mon­day. Anoth­er spokesman issued a state­ment Mon­day that did not address the discrepancy.

State offi­cials also argued that the Postal Ser­vice con­tin­ued to deliv­er the fly­ers even after being warned on Thurs­day that state offi­cials object­ed to the mail­ings and being told Fri­day that lit­i­ga­tion was pending.

“The chal­lenge of remov­ing these Notices from the mail stream aris­es because of Defen­dants’ own con­duct in con­tin­u­ing to place them in the mail stream after being put on notice, and being told on Fri­day that lit­i­ga­tion was immi­nent,” the fil­ing said.

Dunn said the Postal Ser­vice deliv­ered post­cards on Sat­ur­day despite being aware of the law­suit because the cards had been put into the mail pro­cess­ing sys­tem before 1 p.m. Fri­day. The fly­ers were pulled from the Den­ver dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter when offi­cials there learned of the lawsuit.

The next hear­ing in the case is set for Friday.

(Vis­it­ed 1 times, 1 vis­its today)



Tags: suchen suche search tag anzeigen besucherzahl brows­er design domain inhalt jahr karpfen kon­to prob­lem inhalt schal­ten mod­ell­bahn spiele­max spiel tag web­seite preise werbung 

Ein Reichsmarschall von Adolf Hitler hatte auch Märklin Modelleisenbahn Modelle > read more

Schreibe einen Kommentar