King County Elections and the Washington Secretary of State are working with law enforcement after a box of abandoned ballots was found next to a dumpster in Renton earlier this year.
The 380 ballots, mostly from King County, were not filled out and were never delivered to voters. They were addressed to voters who mostly used storefront mailboxes, like parcel lockers from Amazon or UPS, and spanned elections from 2022 to 2025. State GOP leader and Republican state Rep. Jim Walsh posted on social media about the ballots last week and said they represented a security risk.
“It's not proof of fraud, but it's proof of the opportunity for that,” Walsh said. “When a lot of hands are touching a ballot, you can't be absolutely certain what happens.”
Walsh, who has long been critical of the state’s mail-in ballot system, said he would be looking into future legislation to help voters more closely track their ballots once they’re mailed out.
“When there's a box of 380 ballots sitting outside a dumpster next to a strip mall, I mean, that's an exposure, that's a risk a bad actor could pick up that box and try to vote those ballots,” he said.
The ballots were unopened, so no voter fraud is suspected.
Walsh said he came into possession of the box of unopened ballots through a friend of a friend who had first tried to contact King County Elections and got no response.
Halei Watkins, the communications manager with King County Elections, said the office has no record of being contacted about the ballots, but it wasn’t unusual for unmailed ballots to be found after an election.
“It feels very reminiscent of almost every even-year election, after ballots go out, we hear a few reports from folks where mail was stolen and ballots were found in a ditch,” Watkins said.
She added their system does account for mail theft and loss, through processes like signature verification, to protect against fraud.
“There are lots of checks and balances to our election system, and the best way for voters to know where their ballot is and to keep an eye out for it is to sign up for ballot alerts and to track their ballot through the process,” Watkins said.
The Secretary of State’s office has said they also have no record of ballots being reported missing.
“If a person finds undelivered mail that has been improperly disposed of, there are several steps they should take to ensure it is fully investigated. Posting a video on social media is not one of them,” said Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. “Washington elections are safe and secure. We check the signature on every ballot to determine that the ballot sent to a voter was signed and returned by that voter.”
Voters are encouraged to check votewa.gov at the beginning of an election period to check if they’ll be receiving a ballot for the election. Voters can sign up for ballot status text notifications at votewa.gov to ensure their ballots are counted.
