HARRISBURG, Pa. — Thousands of mail ballots were thrown out in Washington and Oregon this year for arriving or being postmarked too late, according to state data the two states’ election officials presented in the past week — and Pennsylvania extends none of the leeway both of those states do: a ballot that reaches the county office after 8 p.m. on Election Day does not count, no matter when it was mailed.
The rate at which mail votes are rejected for arriving late has risen in roughly a dozen states, The New York Times reported, as the U.S. Postal Service consolidates processing and as the Supreme Court weighs whether the agency can put new mail-voting rules in place eight weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms.
Pennsylvania does not credit postmarks. Ballots “returned after that time, even if postmarked by 8 p.m.,” will not count, the Department of State said before the May 19 primary. Late receipt was already the single most common reason ballots were discarded here: 33 percent of the roughly 1 percent rejected in the 2024 general election, ahead of date errors, missing signatures and missing secrecy envelopes.
In Oregon, which has counted ballots postmarked by Election Day if they arrive within a week, more than 7,300 of the 55,000 ballots that came in during that grace period after the May primary were rejected for a late postmark — 13.1 percent, higher than in any prior election.
“More Oregonians had their voices go unheard just because their ballots couldn’t make it through the mail in time,” Secretary of State Tobias Read said at a news conference Tuesday. “That is unacceptable.” Read is asking the Legislature’s emergency board for $1.25 million to add 20 drop boxes, expand ballot tracking and cover other election costs. He appeared alongside Gov. Tina Kotek and Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, according to a post on his X account Tuesday.
Washington did not count 20,267 ballots for late postmarks in its August primary, up from 16,131 in the 2024 primary, on lower turnout of about 37 percent. Rural counties took the brunt, according to state data reported by Cascadia Daily News: the number quadrupled in Mason and Stevens counties and tripled in five others, while King, Spokane, Pierce and Clark counties improved.
“The Postal Service is disenfranchising voters across the United States with policies that are leaving them with a ballot that was cast, but never counted,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said in Seattle, where she and Secretary of State Steve Hobbs released the figures.
The mechanics are not in dispute. A Postal Service rule published Nov. 24 states that a postmark date “does not inherently or necessarily align with the date on which the Postal Service first accepted possession of the mailpiece,” and mail dropped more than 50 miles from a distribution center is now picked up the next day rather than at day’s end. Yakima County’s mail travels about 200 miles to Spokane and back, county Auditor Charles Ross told The Associated Press.
The agency says the system is working. It delivered 233.3 million pieces of election mail in fiscal 2026 through Aug. 28 with a 97.94 percent on-time score, spokesperson Natashi Garvins said, and voters can request a manual postmark at a counter.
The rejected ballots are a fraction of the nearly 2 million cast in Washington’s primary. In Whatcom County’s 42nd Legislative District, two state Senate candidates were separated by four votes.
The legal picture is unsettled. A federal judge in Massachusetts entered a preliminary injunction against parts of the postal rule Sept. 4; the solicitor general asked the Supreme Court to stay it Sept. 6, and responses are due at 4 p.m. Wednesday. Read called the block “an important win” in a video posted to his Instagram account Friday.
For Lehigh Valley voters, none of that changes the arithmetic. Lehigh and Northampton counties each operate ballot drop boxes, which close at 8 p.m. on Election Day.