A federal judge on Dec.24 approved of a deal struck between the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and civil rights groups that would treat absentee ballots as express mail ahead of Georgia’s critical runoff election on Jan. 5. The organization agreed to treat ballots as express mail if they were still in a processing plant in the three days before the election, according to the court documents (pdf). This means that mail-in ballots would be delivered the next day. Additionally, ballots being sent from a New York printer to the state would be fast-tracked, and Georgia postal facilities will regularly sweep for undelivered ballots until the Jan. 5 election to ensure no ballots are misplaced. In Atlanta, the USPS agreed to skip the processing plants and directly send the ballots to the Georgia Board of Elections (BOE). For days on which the Postal Service is not operating or the BOE is not open, ballots will be delivered …