(The Center Square) – More than 20,000 ballots were rejected in Washington’s August primary after U.S. Postal Service policy changes, with rural and Latino-heavy counties taking the biggest hit.
However, additional expected modifications to the USPS system were dealt a major blow Monday evening, with the Supreme Court blocking proposed changes from going into effect for the fall midterm election.
The halt comes as Washington dealt with thousands more uncounted ballots than previous years, with the cause of those delays still unresolved.
Statewide, late postmark rejections rose 32% this August compared with the 2024 primary, according to Secretary of State data. In 19 of Washington’s 39 counties, the late-postmark rejection rate more than doubled year over year, and in two counties it more than quadrupled.
Mason County saw the biggest jump: compared with the 2024 primary, the late postmark rejection rate rose 329.7%. That’s followed by Stevens County (303.7%), Yakima County (268.5%), Okanogan County (263.5%) and Franklin County (206%).
The chairs of each of these five counties’ Republican parties did not respond to The Center Square’s request for comment Monday.
These counties share a common thread: they’re rural, backed Trump in 2024, and several have sizable Latino or Native American populations that are already more vulnerable to mail-service gaps. Hispanic residents make up 52.4% of the population In Yakima County and 21% in Okanogan County per Census Bureau estimates. Okanogan County includes portions of the Colville Reservation and has an American Indian population of 8.3%.
The ballot rejections come after new federal rules and cost-cutting initiatives consolidated USPS mail processing into regional hubs. Under the change, mail from post offices more than 50 miles from a distribution center is now trucked to that hub once a day instead of twice, meaning ballots can sit for a day or more before they’re postmarked.
In a field test, Snohomish County officials discovered that Priority Mail clearly marked as ballots could take as long as 20 days to arrive.
For Hayward Evans, president of Seattle-King County NAACP, this along with more high-profile USPS changes ordered by President Trump in March reflect decades-old tactics used to keep women and Black Americans from voting.
“States erected barriers: poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, violence and other measures designed to keep Black citizens from the ballot,” Evans said at a press conference last week with U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. “History teaches us that progress is not permanent unless we protect it.”
In a March 31 executive order, President Trump directed states to submit lists of mail voters and also reject ballots tied to non-compliant envelope designs or unlisted voters. USPS published a final version of that rule Aug. 26, but it remains blocked for the November election: a federal judge in Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction last week after a coalition of 25 states, including Washington, sued.
The Trump administration had defended the rule as a narrow, fraud-prevention measure rather than a broader restriction on mail voting.
Solicitor General John Sauer told the courts the USPS’s envelope-design and voter-list requirements are modest and would not involve verifying voter eligibility or blocking ballots from voters left off state-submitted lists, arguing the added scrutiny helps guard against mail fraud.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis has called the changes commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots.
On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to lift the injunction, over dissents from Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
In a brief, unsigned order, the court found the administration was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge, leaving the rule blocked for the midterms.
The ruling came a day after a second judge – Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, in a parallel case in Washington, D.C. – issued his own injunction against the rule, finding no statute gives USPS the authority to enforce its key provisions.
Washington Attorney General Nick Brown released a statement after the ruling.
“Today’s ruling is a huge win for orderly elections this November,” Brown’s statement said.
“State and local elections officials can now focus on what they do best-administering legitimate elections that count every eligible ballot cast. Our office will remain vigilant around any other attempts by this administration to meddle in the current election while we continue the longer court fight against the administration’s illegal attack on mail-in voting.”
Uncounted votes
The recent pattern of late-postmark rejections wasn’t limited to Republican-leaning areas. Clallam County, which backed Kamala Harris, saw rejections rise 199%, and Whitman and Snohomish counties, also Harris counties, saw increases of 133.2% and 66.9%, respectively.
The rate increases tell one story, but the raw vote totals tell another. Since Yakima County is far more populous than counties like Mason or Stevens, its jump – from 524 late-postmark rejections in 2024 to 1,750 in 2026 – is the single largest increase in ballots kept from counting anywhere in the state.
Statewide, 20,267 ballots were rejected for late postmarks in the 2026 primary, up from 16,131 in 2024, creating a net increase of 4,136 rejected ballots even as about 100,000 fewer ballots were cast overall.
Nineteen of the 20 counties with the largest percentage increases are smaller, more rural counties outside the Puget Sound corridor – the exception being Snohomish, which had the second-largest number of rejected ballots behind Yakima. By contrast, 10 counties saw rejection rates decline from 2024 to 2026, most among the state’s larger, more metropolitan counties: King, Pierce, Clark, Spokane, Thurston, Cowlitz, Jefferson, Lincoln, Columbia and Skamania.
A statewide map from the Washington Secretary of State’s office breaks down the number of rejections by county, and the reason.
Washington voters will still receive their ballots by mail for the Nov. 3 general election following the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling on the broader USPS rule.
But the separate postmarking and transportation changes that officials blame for the primary’s rejection-rate spike aren’t part of that litigation and remain in place.
Cantwell has called for Senate hearings on the postmarking issue and is urging voters, especially in rural areas, to use official ballot drop boxes or mail ballots as early as possible.
The League of Women Voters of Washington suggests mailing one week out, and to sign up for the state’s ballot tracker.