Amid Postal Service changes, more Whatcom County ballots rejected for lateness

Twenty-two ballots cast by Point Roberts voters never made it into the final count in Washington’s August primary because they arrived too late.

Lateness accounted for 22 of the 23 ballots rejected in the isolated border community’s sole precinct — nearly 96%, according to precinct-level data released by the Washington Secretary of State’s office.

The numbers provide a local view of a statewide increase in ballots rejected for lateness following changes in U.S. Postal Service transportation and postmarking practices.

Across Whatcom County, 855 ballots were rejected or otherwise went uncounted in the primary. Of those, 615 — nearly 72% — were rejected for lateness. That was 179 more late ballots than in the 2024 primary.

The impact varied sharply among north Whatcom County communities.

Ten precincts wholly or predominantly within Birch Bay recorded 45 rejected ballots, 33 of them for lateness. If precinct 113, which crosses the southern and eastern edge of the Birch Bay census boundary, is included, the total rises to 53 rejected ballots, including 40 that were late.

Across Blaine’s six precincts, 28 ballots were rejected, including 15 for lateness. The numbers were more pronounced in precinct 304, which includes Semiahmoo: Nine of its 12 rejected ballots arrived too late.

Point Roberts stood apart. Its 22 late ballots represented almost every rejected ballot in the precinct and about 3.6% of all ballots rejected for lateness in Whatcom County, despite the community accounting for only a small portion of the county’s voters.

The figures sharpen warnings from state election officials that changes in mail handling may fall most heavily on rural and geographically isolated communities, where voters have fewer ballot drop boxes and outgoing mail must travel farther before it is processed and postmarked.

More than 20,000 ballots statewide were rejected for arriving too late in the August primary, thousands more than in 2024.

Statewide, the number of ballots rejected because of late postmarks increased about 32%. In the 2024 primary, 16,131 ballots were rejected for lateness. This year’s total exceeded 20,000, even though overall turnout was lower, at about 37%.

More than two-thirds of ballots were returned through official drop boxes this year, a slight increase from 2024.

Rural counties experienced some of the largest increases. Lewis, Pend Oreille, Franklin, Okanogan and Yakima counties recorded roughly three times as many late ballots as they had two years earlier. In Mason and Stevens counties, the number roughly quadrupled. About half of Washington’s counties saw their totals double.

Meanwhile, several of the state’s largest urban counties moved in the opposite direction. King, Spokane, Pierce and Clark counties recorded fewer ballots rejected for lateness.

Election officials have pointed to Postal Service transportation changes and a rule finalized late last year clarifying that the date stamped on a piece of mail does not necessarily match the date the Postal Service first received it.

Under Washington law, mailed ballots must be postmarked by Election Day. Ballots placed in official drop boxes must be deposited by 8 p.m. that day.

The Postal Service also changed transportation practices affecting mail collected more than 50 miles from a regional processing center. In some communities, mail is no longer transported to the processing center at the end of the day it is collected. Instead, it may remain overnight and be picked up the following day.

Because the mail is postmarked at a processing facility rather than when it is deposited in a local mailbox or accepted at a post office, the date on the postmark may be later than the date the voter mailed the ballot.

That distinction can determine whether a vote is counted.

A Postal Service spokesperson said that, through Aug. 28, the agency had delivered 233.3 million pieces of election mail nationwide during the 2026 fiscal year, with an on-time performance score of 97.94%.

The agency recommended that voters return ballots early or bring them to a post office and request a manual postmark. The Postal Service has said its postmarking practices themselves have not changed, but that changes to its transportation network can affect when mail reaches the facility where the postmark is applied.

The rejected ballots represent a small share of the nearly 2 million votes cast statewide in the primary. But small numbers can matter in close elections.

Two Democratic candidates seeking to advance in a state Senate race representing part of Whatcom County were separated by four votes after a recount — a margin far smaller than the 615 Whatcom County ballots rejected for lateness.

Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell presented the statewide data earlier this month in Seattle. Both urged voters to return ballots well before Election Day or use official ballot drop boxes.

Cantwell said the combination of delayed transportation and later postmarking could leave voters believing they had returned their ballots on time when the official postmark indicated otherwise.

State officials attributed part of the rural-urban divide to access. Voters in urban areas generally have more drop boxes nearby, while people in rural and remote communities may have to travel farther or rely more heavily on the mail.

Election officials also encountered delays involving ballots returned in one county but sent to another county for counting. In one example, ballots transferred from Skagit County to Island County were postmarked Aug. 7 but did not arrive until after the Aug. 18 certification deadline, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

Those ballots were not included in the state’s tally of ballots rejected for lateness.

Hobbs’ office has spent $400,000 educating voters about the importance of using ballot drop boxes and more than $350,000 reimbursing counties for additional boxes and revised ballot-envelope instructions.

Ballots for the Nov. 3 general election are scheduled to be mailed to most Washington voters Oct. 16.

Election officials are urging voters who use the mail to return their ballots at least a week before Election Day. Voters returning ballots closer to the deadline are advised to use an official drop box or take the ballot inside a post office and request that it be postmarked by hand.

For Point Roberts voters, the precinct data make the warning unusually concrete: Of 23 ballots that went uncounted in August, all but one were rejected because they were late.

This story is based in part on reporting by Jake Goldstein-Street of the Washington State Standard. The Northern Light conducted precinct-level analysis using Washington Secretary of State election data and Whatcom County precinct boundaries.