HELENA, Mont. — Terry Thompson had an election for voters in Cascade County, Montana. Why then, she thought, was her Great Falls office receiving mail-in ballots filled out by voters in places like Wasilla, Alaska; Vancouver, Washington; and Tampa, Florida?
In total, this involved only a dozen ballots from voters in other states. But she said there were still concerns about the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to deliver election mail and whether the erroneous ballots would ever be counted.
“I mean, I would have had to send FedEx envelopes to all these states to try to get them where they needed to go,” said Thompson, the county elections administrator.
She received about a half-dozen others who should have gone to election offices in other parts of Montana. For them, she said she just had to “hope and pray” that they would get back in time.
While a stray ballot can end up in the wrong place during election season, the number of ballots destined for other states and counties that end up in Thompson’s office is unusual. The Associated Press found it was not an anomaly. Election offices in California, Louisiana, New Mexico and elsewhere also reported receiving completed mail-in ballots that should have gone to other states.
The Postal Service said Tuesday that without additional information or tracking data from barcodes on ballots, it cannot comment further on these cases. Earlier this month, the company said it had been working closely with local election officials to resolve the concerns.
But for some election officials, the misdirected ballots confirm concerns they raised before the Nov. 5 presidential election about the U.S. Postal Service’s performance and ability to handle a flood of mail-in ballots as early voting has become increasingly popular among voters.
State elections officials warned in September, problems with the country’s postal delivery system threatened to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election. In a letter to the US Postmaster General Louis DeJoyelection officials noticed problems during the primaries, including mailed ballots that were postmarked on time but received late and instances of properly addressed election mail returning as undeliverable.
In Louisiana, state election officials said about 40 to 50 ballots destined for 10 other states were eventually delivered to local election offices, mostly in Orleans Parish. Deputy Secretary of State Joel Watson Jr. said the Secretary of State’s Office had “extreme frustration” with the Postal Service’s continued “inconsistencies” and “lack of accountability.”
Dozens of ballots from out of state were also delivered to the wrong local elections office, Watson said.
“There were many instances where our staff had to physically take these ballots and take them to another parish to get them there in time to make sure those votes count,” Watson said. “We had to spend time and resources in the hours and days immediately leading up to the largest election we hold to ensure these ballots got to the right places.”
Louisiana law does not allow ballot drop boxes, and Watson indicated his office does not support a move in that direction and would continue to encourage voters to cast ballots in person. He mentioned safety issues such as the arsons on mailboxes in Washington and Oregon ahead of the Nov. 5 election, damaging ballots.
The US Postal Service said it places election mail ahead of other mail for processing and processes it with daily checks known as “all clears.” The USPS also recommends that election offices use individual barcodes on ballot envelopes.
“The United States Postal Service is fully committed to fulfilling our role in the election process when policymakers choose to use us as part of their election system, and to delivering election mail in a timely manner,” said Rod Spurgeon, a spokesman for the USPS. said in an email.
Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said voting monitors identified some problems within the facilities during the election season, but they have been resolved.
“While we await final statistics from the Postal Service, all indications are that voting by mail was a success in the 2024 general election,” he said in an emailed statement Tuesday.
Still, state and local election officials reported numerous cases of ballots ending up in the wrong place.
In New Mexico’s Santa Fe County, County Clerk Katharine Clark said seven ballots intended for her office were instead delivered to Southern California’s Los Angeles County. Those ballots were rerouted, Clark said, but did not arrive at her office before the state’s deadline to be counted, which was 7 p.m. on Election Day.
“It does mean that that person was denied the right to vote because the ballots from Los Angeles County — even though they were sent (to Santa Fe) with a turnaround time of four or five days — did not reach them. us in time to count,” she said.
In addition, Clark said her office received two ballots, destined for Los Angeles County, and one for Maricopa County in Arizona, which she returned to the US Postal Service. Nine ballots should have been delivered to other New Mexico counties.
In addition to the Santa Fe County ballots, Los Angeles County election officials said they also received two ballots that should have been sent to Torrance County, New Mexico. That county’s clerk, Linda Jaramillo, said she did not remember receiving the ballots from Los Angeles County but expressed confidence in the county’s postal service.
“There will be a few,” Jaramillo said. “You can’t have perfection.”
The California secretary of state’s office said about 150 ballots from Oregon voters were incorrectly sent to California before being returned. Officials at the state elections office in Springfield, Illinois, somehow ended up with a ballot intended for Massachusetts.
“Yeah, I have no idea how that happens,” said Matt Dietrich, spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections.
Amy Cohen, executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors, called the incidents “disappointing and heartbreaking.”
“Election officials never want to see misdelivered ballots, but it does happen for a variety of reasons, not all of which are the fault of the USPS,” Cohen said, noting that voters can sometimes forget to use the outer envelope that contains important address information. .
But Cohen said the examples from the past presidential elections appear to reflect issues that election officials have been concerned about since 2023 and that were highlighted in their September letter to U.S. Postal Service leadership.
“We hope they will get to the bottom of what went wrong to prevent this from happening again in the future and respond to the issues escalated by the election community,” Cohen said.
In Kansas, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican, was so frustrated after the August primary that hundreds of ballots arrived after the deadline for counting them that he posted on social media: “The Pony Express is more efficient right now. ‘ Schwab, unlike other Republicans, has touted the use of drop boxes.
There were no reports of ballots being incorrectly mailed from or to other states, but Schwab said in a statement this week: “I still encourage voters not to use the USPS to mail their ballot unless there is no other option .”
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Cassidy reported from Atlanta and Hanna from Topeka, Kansas. Associated Press writers Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California; Jack Brook in New Orleans; Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and others contributed to this report.