Voters in two counties located in Washington and Oregon are facing issues receiving their mail-in ballots, as election officials highlighted on Wednesday. This development comes shortly after a series of incendiary devices were detonated in ballot drop boxes across both states.
According to election officials, the U.S. Postal Service has not delivered an unspecified number of ballots in Coos County, Oregon, while up to 300 ballots remain undelivered in Whitman County, Washington. Both states primarily manage elections through mail-in voting.
In Coos County, which is situated in the southwest coastal region of Oregon, officials have not pinpointed the exact number of missing ballots. This is largely due to the fact that officials only become aware of missing ballots when voters report them, as noted by Laura Kerns, a spokesperson for the Oregon Secretary of State’s office. The county consists of around 50,000 registered voters.
In Washington, Whitman County Auditor Sandy Jamison indicated that approximately 300 ballots have gone missing in Garfield, a town located about 55 miles (approximately 88 kilometers) southeast of Spokane. Additionally, there have been various reports of missing ballots in areas surrounding the town.
Clarifying the situation, Coos County Clerk Julie Brecke expressed that her office has received numerous inquiries from concerned voters regarding the ballots not arriving, attributing the issue to a “USPS error.”
The U.S. Postal Service did not respond to requests for comment on the matter promptly. Jamison from Whitman County confirmed that a third-party vendor had delivered about 24,000 ballots to the post office on October 16, and all of these — including the currently missing ones — were logged as received by the Postal Service.
“The whereabouts of these ballots after that remain unclear,” Jamison stated. Postal officials have communicated that an investigation is ongoing, but as of Wednesday, they had not provided any updates on the missing ballots’ status.
Efforts are being made to expedite the issuance of replacement ballots. Jamison noted the urgency of the situation, given that all ballots need to be postmarked by November 5 to be considered valid.
Voters are given the option of having their replacement ballots sent through the mail or picking them up directly from the auditor’s office. In Oregon, state officials are similarly advising residents to reach out to the Coos County clerk’s office promptly to arrange for a substitute ballot.
Kerns indicated that the issue appears to be limited to Coos County, and reassured that any ballot that is postmarked by the U.S. Postal Service by or on November 5 will be counted, even if it arrives at the clerk’s office within a week after that date.
The Oregon state Senate Republican Caucus has called on the secretary of state, county officials, and the postal service to address this “unacceptable delay” promptly to ensure all voters receive their ballots without additional interference.
In a related note, there were reports of attacks on ballot drop boxes earlier this week, with incendiary devices detonated in two locations — one in Portland, Oregon, and another in Vancouver, Washington, resulting in the destruction of numerous ballots.