Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab is asking for an explanation from the U.S. Postal Service on the handling of mail ballots for the August primary election.

In a letter to U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, Schwab raised concerns about ballots arriving late to election offices in Kansas:

During the recent primary election in Kansas, voters had the opportunity to exercise their constitutional right to cast a ballot. Over 18 percent chose to do so by mail. Kansas law requires that an advance mail ballot must be postmarked no later than 7 p.m. on Election Day and received within three days of the election for the ballot to be
counted.

I am extremely concerned there is a troubling pattern that persists in the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) processing and handling of ballots. Many are either missing postmarks or failing to reach the county election office on time, even when voters have mailed them timely.

Multiple county election officials have notified my office that ballots were received from the local post office days, if not weeks, after they were placed in the custody of the USPS under the assumption that they would be received and counted by county election officials.

In fact, some ballots were delivered to the county election offices lacking proper postmarks. A post-election survey of Kansas’s 105 counties revealed that nearly 1,000 ballots were received – and are continuing to be received – in approximately half of the counties without a postmark or after the three-day grace period, making those ballots ineligible to be counted, despite being mailed before election day. A ballot without a postmark cannot be counted during the three-day grace period.

The Postal Service’s failure to deliver as promised has disenfranchised at approximately 1,000 voters in Kansas. That means that 2 percent of ballots transmitted by mail in Kansas were not counted due to USPS administrative failures.

Schwab is calling the situation unacceptable and he is calling on DeJoy to explain the Postal Service’s failure to provide a service that enables Kansans to exercise their constitutional right to vote.