Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab says an estimated 1,000 primary election ballots were discounted because of miscues by the Postal Service.
Schwab is demanding answers from the postmaster general about why the ballots were postmarked but weren’t delivered to county election offices before the three-day grace period ended or lacked a required postmark entirely.
“Some ballots were not counted because they lacked the required postmark by the U.S. Postal Service, a simple and easy step. This is unacceptable,” Schwab said in a statement late Monday afternoon.
A 2017 state law allows ballots postmarked on or before Election Day to be accepted for three days after the election.
However, in recent years there’s been an effort to eliminate the grace period, with some lawmakers saying Election Day should be limited only to Election Day, a claim that one key lawmaker said was bolstered by what happened in this case.
The secretary is requesting the following information from the Postal Service:
- An explanation of the Postal Service’s policy for ensuring that every ballot is postmarked.
- How the Postal Service will ensure that every ballot is postmarked in the November general election.
- How the Postal Service will ensure every ballot that has been placed into its custody prior to Election Day will be delivered on time to county election offices for the votes to be counted.
“Proper and timely handling of mail ballots is a key aspect to maintaining trust in our election system,” Schwab said in a statement.
“It is unacceptable that your agency has disenfranchised Kansas voters,” Schwab said in the letter to Postmaster Louis DeJoy.
“I urge you to provide Kansans a clear explanation for your failure to provide service that enables Kansans to exercise their constitutional right to vote, and to articulate what action USPS will take to ensure that every ballot entrusted to the USPS for the November election is properly postmarked and delivered on time.”
There were 336,139 ballots cast in the Aug. 3 Kansas primary election. About 12%, or 40,025 ballots, were returned by mail.
Schwab told the postmaster general that multiple county election officials have notified his office that ballots were received from the local post office days, if not weeks, after they were placed in the mail.
He said a post-election survey of Kansas’s 105 counties revealed that nearly 1,000 ballots were received – and are continuing to be received – in about half of the counties without a postmark or after the three-day grace period.
In the past, Schwab has been critical of the post office, saying the much-criticized ballot drop boxes were safer and more reliable.
“I don’t understand the angst with drop boxes,” Schwab told the House elections committee in February 2022.
“If I owed you $1,000, do you want me to put that cash and mail it to you, or would you rather me drop it off?” Schwab asked in response to a question from Republican state Rep. Pat Proctor of Leavenworth.
“When you’re mailing a ballot, you’re giving it to someone who is not a poll worker and if you’re on the eastern side of the state it goes to Kansas City; it leaves the state and is brought back into the state,” he said.
“If you’re on the western side, it goes all the way to Denver,” he said.
“Or you can just drop it off at the county office in their box,” he said. “I don’t know why you would give to the post office when you can just drop it off.”
He questioned why it’s not better to drop a ballot in a location where there is a Democrat and a Republican in the chain of custody compared to a postal worker who is “treating it like a Bed Bath & Beyond coupon.”
Republican state Rep. Pat Proctor, chair of the House elections committee, said what happened with these 1,000 ballots demonstrates why the three-day grace period should be eliminated.
“After talking to election officers across the state, I am convinced that the “three-day grace period” does more harm than good,” the Leavenworth lawmaker said in a text message Monday night.
“The secretary of state’s report that over a thousand Kansas voters – in an election with a less than a 17% turnout – were disenfranchised because their ballots were not postmarked only confirms this conviction,” he said,
“We need to reaffirm that Election Day is Election Day and end this failed policy that disenfranchises Kansas voters.”
