HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Terry Thompson had an election to run for voters in Cascade County, Montana. Why then, she thought, was her office in Great Falls being sent mailed ballots completed by voters in places such as Wasilla, Alaska; Vancouver, Washington; and Tampa, Florida?
It was only about a dozen ballots total from voters in other states. But she said it still raised concerns about the ability of the U.S. Postal Service to deliver election mail and whether the errant ballots would ever be counted.
“I mean, I would have had to been doing FedEx overnight envelopes to all these states to try to get them where they needed to go,” said Thompson, the county’s election administrator.
She received about a half dozen others that should have gone to county election offices in other parts of Montana. For those, she said she “just had to hope and pray” they made it back on time.
While a stray ballot ending up in the wrong place can happen during election season, the number of ballots destined for other states and counties that ended up at Thompson’s office is unusual. The Associated Press found it wasn’t an anomaly. Election offices in California, Louisiana, New Mexico and elsewhere also reported receiving completed ballots in the mail that should have gone to other states.
The Postal Service said Tuesday that without additional information or tracking data from bar codes on ballot envelopes, it cannot comment further on those cases. It said earlier this month that it had been working closely with local election officials to resolve concerns.
But to 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 crush of mail ballots, as early voting has become increasingly popular with voters.
State election officials warned in September that problems with the nation’s mail delivery system threatened to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election. In a letter to U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the election officials noted problems during the primaries that included mailed ballots postmarked on time but received too late be counted and instances of properly addressed election mail returned as undeliverable.
In Louisiana, state election officials said some 40 to 50 ballots destined for 10 other states ended up being delivered to local election offices, mostly in Orleans Parish. Deputy Secretary of State Joel Watson Jr. said the Secretary of State’s Office had “extraordinary frustration” for the Postal Service’s continued “inconsistencies” and “lack of accountability.”
Dozens of mail ballots from inside the state also were delivered to the wrong local election office, Watson said.
“There were many instances where our staff had to physically take these ballots and drive them to another parish to get them there on time to make sure those votes count,” Watson said. “We had to use time and resources in the hours and days immediately preceding the biggest election we hold to make sure these ballots were delivered to the right places.”
Louisiana law does not permit ballot drop boxes, and Watson indicated his office does not support moving in that direction and would continue to encourage voters to cast their ballots in person. He cited security concerns such as the arson attacks on drop boxes in Washington and Oregon ahead of the Nov. 5 election in which ballots were damaged.
The U.S. Postal Service said it puts election mail ahead of other mail for processing and accounts for it with daily checks, known as “all clears.” Also, the USPS recommends that election offices use individual bar codes on ballot envelopes.
“The United States Postal Service is fully committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process when policy makers choose to utilize us as a part of their election system, and to delivering election mail in a timely manner,” Rod Spurgeon, a USPS spokesman, said in an email.
Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said ballot monitors identified some problems inside facilities during the election season but said they were resolved.
“While we are waiting on the final statistics from the Postal Service, all indications show that vote-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 bound for her office were instead delivered to Los Angeles County in Southern California. Those ballots were redirected, Clark said, but did not arrive at her office before the state’s deadline to be counted, which is 7 p.m. on Election Day.
“It does mean that person got denied the right to vote, because the ballots from Los Angeles County — even though they were sent (to Santa Fe) with a four- or five-day lead time — they didn’t get to 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 that she sent back to the U.S. Postal Service. Nine ballots should have been delivered to other counties within New Mexico.
In addition to the Santa Fe County ballots, Los Angeles County election officials said they also received two ballots that should have been mailed to Torrance County, New Mexico. That county’s clerk, Linda Jaramillo, said she did not recall receiving the ballots from Los Angeles County but expressed faith in the nation’s mail service.
“There’s going to be a few,” Jaramillo said. “You can’t have perfection.”
The California Secretary of State’s office said about 150 mail ballots from Oregon voters were misdirected to California before being sent back. Officials at the state election office in Springfield, Illinois, somehow ended up with a ballot intended for Massachusetts.
“Yeah, I have no idea how that happens,” said Matt Dietrich, spokesperson 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 don’t ever want to see misdelivered ballots, but it does happen for variety of reasons, not all of which are USPS’s fault,” Cohen said, noting that voters can sometimes forget to use the outer envelope that contains important address information.
But Cohen said the examples from this past presidential election seem to reflect the issues that election officials had been worried about since 2023 and 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 it from happening again in the future and that they will be responsive 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 with hundreds of mail ballots arriving after the deadline for counting them that he posted on social media, “The Pony Express is more efficient at this point.” Schwab, unlike other Republicans, has touted the use of drop boxes.
There were no reports of ballots misdirected from or to other states, but Schwab said in a statement this week: “I still encourage voters to not 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.