Election officials, U.S. Postal Service urge mailing ballots at least one week before Election Day.
OLYMPIA, Wash. — It’s not too late to vote in next week’s special election — just don’t mail your ballot.
With less than a week before Election Day, Pierce County Auditor Linda Farmer is urging voters to use county ballot drop boxes rather than the mail, warning recent changes to U.S. Postal Service policy are putting ballots at risk of rejection because of late postmarks.
Washington state law requires ballots to be postmarked by Election Day.
But a policy shift announced last year by the U.S. Postal Service means mail is no longer postmarked when it is received. Instead, it is marked only after reaching a central mail processing facility.
That delay has caused problems for voters who dropped their ballots too close to recent elections.
“We’re no longer in a state of business as usual when it comes to elections in Washington state,” Farmer said.
The consequences are already being felt across the state.
According to the Washington Secretary of State’s Office, nearly 15,000 ballots were rejected in last November’s election because of late postmarks — accounting for almost two-thirds of all rejected ballots.
The figure is a sharp rise from the 2024 presidential election, when about 4,600 ballots were disqualified for late postmarks, representing about 12% of rejections.
Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, called the situation deeply frustrating and spoke from personal experience. Three members of his family, his wife and two sons, had their ballots rejected last year because of late postmarks.
“It’s very frustrating because it’s a simple fix,” Hobbs said, adding, “I should have sent that message to my kids and my wife.”
His ballot was counted because he used a drop box.
Farmer is now pushing to expand the number of drop boxes across Pierce County and is calling for a shift in how election officials communicate with voters.
“Use the drop box. In fact, I’d like to do a little bit of a rebrand. It’s not ‘vote by mail,’ it’s ‘vote by drop box,’” Farmer said. “We need to start changing our messaging and doing things to make it easier for the voter to understand.”
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