Election leaders are warning voters to send their ballots as early as possible for the November election, after the August primary saw a significant increase in ballots postmarked after Election Day, which cannot be counted under Washington State law.
“The U.S. Postal Service is trying to do everything they can to ruin vote by mail and the state of Washington,” said Secretary of State Steve Hobbs.
Hobbs says changes from an executive order from President Donald Trump mroe than doubled the number of late ballots that were rejected after the August Primary.
More than 4,000 more ballots were rejected for being late in 2026’s primary versus 2024. More populated counties of Spokane, Pierce, King, and Clark Counties have fewer ballots rejected for being late, but rural counties experienced drastic increases.
Mason County led the way with a 329% increase in late ballots. Stevens County had three times as many late ballots as it sees in a typical election. More than 500 ballots arrived on the Friday after the election, some of the 600 that were postmarked after Election Day. That’s three times the amount the county sees in any election.
“This was completely outsized and the cause being almost predominantly too late. That was also quite, quite alarming,” said Lori Larsen, the Stevens County auditor.
Wildfires were active in Stevens County when the primary occurred, but Larsen says she analyzed zip codes from where the ballots were mailed from and doesn’t believe they had anything to do with the delay.
“Their postmarks were between Election Day on the 4th and when we received it on the seventh. That doesn’t look like voter behavior to me,” Larsen said.
Larsen says she’s working to double the number of ballot drop box sites across her county from five to ten.
Hobbs recommends people mail their ballots as early as possible, but encourages drop boxes to remove any variables from the USPS.
“We had recently talked to the Governor’s office about perhaps getting some money to help these counties get more drop boxes because of the situation that in,” Hobbs said.
Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell said the executive orders targeting both the Post Office and elections are unconstitutional. For elections, she cites the vision of the Founding Fathers.
“Why did the Founding Fathers give us the responsibility and states so that the executive branch or somebody in power would not use their assertive actions to disenfranchise voters? That’s what’s happening here. And if we don’t stand up to this now, then I don’t understand why somebody thinks it’s ever going to stop with the executive branch,” Cantwell said.
In response, USPS says it has had a 97.94% on-time delivery rate through 2026. They encourage voters, as Larsen does, to go in person to post offices or USPS stores and ask employees to manually stamp ballots to ensure the correct postmark.
“While we have not changed our postmarking practices, our adjustments to our transportation operations will result in some mail pieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed. Because postmarks are generally applied at those processing facilities, this means that the date on the postmarks applied at those facilities may not necessarily match the date on which the mailpiece was collected by a letter carrier, dropped off at a retail location, or placed in a collection box,” A USPS spokesperson said in a statement.