Wisconsin USPS Subcontractor Alleges Backdating of Tens of Thousands of Mail-In Ballots

Wisconsin USPS Subcontractor Alleges Backdating of Tens of Thousands of Mail-In Ballots
Election officials count absentee ballots at a polling place located in the Town of Beloit fire station near Beloit, Wisc., on Nov. 3, 2020. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Isabel van Brugen
12/2/2020
Updated:
12/2/2020

A Madison, Wisconsin, man who said he worked as a postal subcontractor in the run up to Election Day, alleged on Tuesday that he was told by USPS employees that his post office planned to backdate tens of thousands of mail-in ballots.

Ethan Pease was one of three individuals who testified in a news conference hosted by Thomas More Society’s Amistad Project in Arlington, Virginia, that they witnessed apparent voting malfeasance during the 2020 election.

Pease, who said he began working for United Mailing Services (UMS) on Aug. 26, alleged that he was told by two postal workers on two separate occasions that the USPS in Wisconsin was gathering over 100,000 ballots on the morning of Nov. 4 to be backdated so that they would be counted even if they arrived after the statutory deadline.

He asserted that it was a bid to circumvent the submission deadline for ballots.

Pease told the news conference that he worked as a route driver and box truck driver picking up mail on a predetermined route, delivering it to UMS for sorting, and then to USPS. He said he began delivering mail-in ballots from UMS to USPS as part of his evening delivery duties.

“I knew this because there were special bins marked for ballots only,” he said. “On one occasion, I forgot to retrieve the ballots for transportation and had to go back for them. After that, I always made sure I had the ballot bins loaded for transportation.”

On Nov. 2, the day before Election Day, Pease recalled that he noticed there was only one ballot in the bin for delivery to USPS, and on Election Day, there were no ballots in the bin for delivery.

“One can imagine my surprise then, when the next day, Nov. 4, I was asked by a senior USPS employee if I had forgotten any ballots the night before,” Pease continued. “He explained that an order came down from the Wisconsin Illinois chapter of USPS that 100,000 ballots were missing.”

Pease said he was told by the same employee that his post office had dispatched employees to look for the missing ballots at around 4 a.m. on Election Day and that only seven or eight were found at UMS.

“Based on my previous experience and habit of double checking for ballots, I believed that to be a lie,” he said.

On Nov. 5, Pease alleged that a second USPS employee told him that USPS employees were ordered to backdate ballots that were received too late to be lawfully counted. He said he then asked her whether he would “get into trouble” with his boss for the allegedly missing ballots discussed with the first USPS employee on Nov. 4.

“‘No you wouldn’t,’ she responded, ‘as long as they were postmarked for the 3rd’. She continued, ‘that’s why they had us do that,'” Pease said.

He said he didn’t alert his supervisors at USPS at the time to the incidents, due to what he perceived to be “their hostility toward President Donald Trump, and their evident contempt for the law.”

“I heard those same two postal office employees making jokes about taking mail-in ballots for Trump and throwing them away,” Pease claimed.

“I’m not a Trump supporter, I’m not a Biden supporter either … but something profoundly wrong occurred in Wisconsin during the presidential election and the American people have a right to know about it.”

The Postal Service didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

The Amistad Project, an initiative that works to preserve civil liberties, said in a statement Tuesday that it had obtained sworn testimony that suggests that “over 300,000 ballots are at issue in Arizona, 548,000 in Michigan, 204,000 in Georgia, and over 121,000 in Pennsylvania.”

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.