State and federal election officials have opened an inquiry after Corvallis postal workers raised concerns that outgoing mail — including some ballots from the May primary — may not have been collected on Election Day.
What happened in Corvallis
Local postal employees told the Corvallis Gazette-Times that supervisors instructed crews to focus on delivering packages on May 19 rather than collecting outgoing mail from neighborhood boxes. In Oregon, a ballot must bear a postmark no later than Election Day to be counted, which makes timely postal processing critical to the vote-counting process.
Benton County spokesperson Anne Thwaits said county officials have met with state and federal representatives to review the matter but do not yet know how many ballots might have been affected. She noted that across the entire county, 388 ballots were recorded with late postmarks.
“This incident, if there were ballots not picked up, did not affect the outcome of any of the races or the measures that were on the ballot. None of them had a margin that was that small.”
The county is awaiting a more detailed explanation from the United States Postal Service about what was discussed at a recent meeting and what the agency’s findings show so far.
State response and USPS position
Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read urged the USPS to examine its operational policies, warning that service reductions have slowed mail processing and postmarking and that voters must be assured those delays won’t occur in November.
“Service cuts to the USPS have already slowed processing and postmarking of all mail, and voters need to know if there is a likelihood of additional delays at the mailbox,”
In response, USPS spokesperson Janella Biggs said the agency met with county and state election officials and found no evidence of delayed ballots. Biggs reiterated the agency’s long-standing guidance urging voters who use mail ballots to send them well before Election Day.
What the numbers show
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Ballots with late postmarks in Benton County | 388 |
| Number of ballots confirmed as left in mailboxes | Unknown |
- State law requires ballots to be postmarked by Election Day for counting.
- County officials have met with state and federal partners; more details are pending from USPS.
- The USPS advises voters to mail ballots early — at least a week before the deadline — to avoid postmark or delivery issues.
This episode follows a pattern of voter concern about postal reliability nationwide. For Benton County voters, the immediate question is procedural: whether any ballots were left uncollected on the day they were due and whether those ballots were later postmarked in time. County officials say current evidence does not show any races were affected by the late-postmark total reported so far.
As investigators from the state and federal level continue to review mail handling and communications between postal supervisors and carriers, election officials and the USPS say they will provide additional information to the public when it becomes available.
