A resident of Washington state has reported an unusual situation involving mail-in ballots, claiming she received 16 ballots for her apartment, each assigned to a different individual. Jami Visaya shared with KING 5, a local NBC affiliate, that the first batch of these ballots arrived on a Friday, shortly after she had moved into her Bellevue apartment on October 3rd.
“There were about nine voter registration ballots that were not mine,” Visaya explained. “They were addressed to other people, and so I thought that was strange, so I ended up returning them to the post office here.”
Visaya mentioned that she handed the ballots to a United States Postal Service (USPS) employee. A few days later, she found seven additional ballots in her mailbox, also directed to her apartment but bearing names she didn’t recognize. “It’s all names of, like, Indian descent and possibly Middle Eastern,” she said.
As per the Washington secretary of state, the state utilizes a vote-by-mail system where all registered voters receive a ballot. Visaya reported that many of the ballots were registered under different surnames. She also referred to her apartment management, noting, “Management said no one’s lived here for three months.”
“Even if someone gets a second ballot (or more), whether under their name or someone else’s, we’ll only ever count one ballot per registered voter with their matching signature,” stated LeVan Hudson, the chief of staff at the King County Elections Office.
In response to concerns about the mail vote system, a tweet read: “Safe and secure” WA mail in voting system is truly the gold standard for elections. Burning ballot boxes, forcing poll workers to mask up to observe and now the USPS fails to deliver ballots to the county. I’m shocked I tell you! Just shocked! 🙄 https://t.co/6wcNfxowuR
— Julie “Florida Woman” Barrett (@juliecbarrett) October 30, 2024
In a related incident, a Minnesota county dismissed an election worker who had left several boxes of mail-in ballots unattended in an open car, as reported by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) on October 22.
Furthermore, concerns regarding mail-in ballots have been echoed by the National Association of State Election Directors and others, who sent a warning letter to the postmaster general in September about potential risks, including delays or loss of election mail, according to the DCNF.
In January, Democratic Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas advised voters to opt for in-person voting instead of mail-in ballots, stating, “[o]ur monitors cannot do it all,” as reported by NBC Connecticut.
