{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.cantwell.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cast-but-never-counted-cantwell-and-secretary-of-state-hobbs-say-trumps-usps-suppressing-wa-mail-in-voting-by-postmarking-or-delivering-ballots-after-election-day", "\u201cCast, But Never Counted\u201d: Cantwell & Secretary of State Hobbs Say Trump\u2019s USPS Suppressing WA Mail-In Voting by Postmarking or Delivering Ballots After Election Day", "2026-09-02", "2026", "2026-09", "Democrat", "Senate", "WA", "Maria Cantwell", "C000127", "www.cantwell.senate.gov", "cantwell", "https://www.cantwell.senate.gov/news/press-releases", "scraper", "\u201cCast, But Never Counted\u201d: Cantwell & Secretary of State Hobbs Say Trump\u2019s USPS Suppressing WA Mail-In Voting by Postmarking or Delivering Ballots After Election Day\n\nNew snapshot report shows rejected primary ballot rates more than doubled in 19 WA counties compared to 2024, and more than quadrupled in 2 counties; Cantwell: \u201cWashingtonians need to know: The Post Office is taking your ballot as a piece of mail but not stamping it that day.\u201d; Cantwell calls on Homeland Security Committee to bring in USPS leadership for questioning\n\nSEATTLE, WA \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs held a press conference in Seattle, together with Seattle King County NAACP President Hayward Evans and League of Women Voters Snohomish County President Brenda Mann Harrison, to warn Washington voters about Administration efforts to undermine their right to vote.\n\nSen. Cantwell and Secretary Hobbs released a new snapshot report showing that late-postmark rejection rates have more than doubled in 19 counties compared to the 2024 primaries \u2013 with rural counties worst affected -- following a new Trump Administration policy that can delay postmarking of mail-in ballots by several days.\n\nAccording to the University of Washington\u2019s April 2026 Vote-By-Mail Research Report Series, more than one-third of voters in the State of Washington returned their ballots through the mail and 95% of general election ballots arrived by Election Day between 2020 and 2024. Nationwide nearly 47 mail ballots were safely and securely cast and counted in the 2024 general election, rather than voting in person at a polling place. That included nearly 4 million Washingtonians.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m calling on my colleagues in the United States Senate to do their oversight job and hold hearings as to why the President of the United States and the Postal Service is disenfranchising voters across the United States with policies that are leaving them with a ballot that was cast, but never counted,\u201d Sen. Cantwell said. \u201cThat\u2019s what Washingtonians need to know: The Post Office is taking your ballot as a piece of mail but not stamping it that day.\u201d\n\n\u201cPlease drop your ballot in a ballot box provided by the local county, if possible,\u201d she continued. \u201cIf you can\u2019t do that, and you\u2019re in a rural community, mail your ballot as soon as you get it. Now, I find a little bit of irony here that the president may be disenfranchising his most stable voters in rural communities by taking the vote away. That is why my colleagues in the United States Senate, if they were going to do their constitutional oversight role instead of trying to promote the SAVE [America] Act, would be holding a hearing of the Homeland Security [and Governmental Affairs] Committee and bringing the U.S. Postal Service in.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe U.S. Postal Service is trying to do everything they can to ruin vote by mail in the State of Washington,\u201d Secretary Hobbs said. \u201cWe are all used to putting our ballot in the mailbox, knowing that if you put it in there before 8 p.m. on election day, it would be counted. But instead, this postmaster general -- in coordination with the administration -- changes the rule on postmarks so that it\u2019s done at the central processing facility. So what does that mean? That could mean days that your ballot is delayed.\u201d\n\nVideo of the press conference is HERE; photos are HERE; and a transcript is HERE. Images of charts displayed at the press conference are available HERE.\n\nIn December, the United States Postal Service finalized a rule that requires ballots to be postmarked at new regional processing and distribution centers, rather than at a community\u2019s local post office. To compound the delay, under new policy, if your post office is over 50 miles from a distribution center, your mail will be transported to the distribution center only once a day, instead of twice. Depending on where the ballot is mailed from, that transfer can take days or even more than a week \u2013 meaning that voters who mail in their ballots on Election Day, or even several days earlier, run the risk of having their votes rejected for being \u201clate.\u201d\n\nThe result is significant voter disenfranchisement, especially in rural areas. The top five worst increases in ballot rejection rates between the 2024 and 2026 elections took place in:\n\nImpacts have also been felt by Washington voters earlier this year. During the February 2026 special election, Snohomish County conducted a test of their mail service to assess the delivery times in their area. As part of the test, election staff deposited generic return ballot envelopes in USPS blue collection boxes at various points leading up to the election. They found that of the ballots mailed the morning of Election Day, less than half were postmarked in time to be counted.\n\nSen. Cantwell and Secretary Hobbs have together been ringing the alarm on the Trump Administration\u2019s dangerous new policies \u2013 in February, Sen. Cantwell invited Secretary Hobbs to Washington, D.C., as her guest to President Trump\u2019s State of the Union address to draw attention to the administration\u2019s election interference.\n\nSen. Cantwell remains a stalwart defender against overreach of the Trump administration into our elections:\n\nOn August 5, she sent a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin demanding the Trump Administration adhere to the National Voter Registration Act\u2019s (NVRA) \u201cquiet period\u201d that prohibits systematic voter purges within 90 days of an election, pushing back against the Administration\u2019s ongoing voter suppression efforts.\n\nOn July 29, she wrote to Blanche, Mullin, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demanding to know whether the Trump administration plans to illegally deploy armed federal law enforcement officers at polling sites during the November 2026 elections.\n\nOn July 28, Sen. Cantwell sharply criticized the Trump administration\u2019s request that the Supreme Court allow him to seize control of state-run elections and implement an anti-vote-by-mail executive order. Lower courts have repeatedly rejected the president\u2019s arguments and stated that his executive order is unconstitutional.\n\nOn July 2, Sen. Cantwell sent a letter to the Postmaster General about the U.S. Postal Service\u2019s (USPS) proposed illegal rule to implement President Trump\u2019s March 31 executive order to interfere with vote-by-mail. Sen. Cantwell\u2019s letter specifically noted the recent decisions of multiple federal courts that found Trump\u2019s executive order unconstitutional and enjoined the USPS from implementing the proposed rule \u2013 including in separate cases brought by the State of Washington with other states and the NAACP \u2013 and demanded the USPS comply with those court orders.\n\nOn June 29, she celebrated the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling in Watson v. Republican National Committee against an effort to stop states from counting mail-in ballots that are received after Election Day, even if they\u2019ve been postmarked in time. The case, brought by the Republican National Committee, threatened the election administration practices of states like Washington.\n\nOn June 24, Sen. Cantwell co-sponsored the Right To Vote Act, legislation to create the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee for all eligible citizens.\n\nOn June 24, she also denounced President Trump\u2019s announcement that he would not sign the 21st Century Road to Housing Act \u2013 an overwhelmingly popular, bipartisan bill that passed both the House and Senate earlier in the week and would have increased housing supply and brought down housing costs \u2013 until Congress passes the SAVE America Act. That legislation, which Trump has repeatedly demanded, would eliminate vote-by-mail and impose onerous new restrictions on voting and registering to vote. It would disenfranchise millions of Americans in the name of a voter fraud \u201ccrisis\u201d that, even by the standards of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, straightforwardly does not exist. President Trump again demanded Congress pass the restrictive bill following the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling in Watson v. Republican National Committee. Despite President Trump\u2019s refusal to sign the bipartisan housing bill, it became law on July 11, since he failed to act on the bill within the time period prescribed by the Constitution after Congress sent him the legislation.\n\nOn June 23, she joined the entire Democratic Caucus in sending a letter to the USPS demanding the USPS abandon attempts to restrict voting by mail called for by President Trump in an illegal and unconstitutional March 31 executive order attacking mail and absentee ballots.\n\nOn June 23, she also delivered a speech on the Senate floor calling out the Trump Administration\u2019s war on mail-in voting as the latest frontier in a long history of voter disenfranchisement in the United States.\n\nOn June 17, she joined several of her Senate Democratic colleagues for a spotlight forum highlighting President Trump\u2019s illegal overreach into our free and fair elections.\n\nOn June 8, she joined 23 of her Senate colleagues in demanding answers over the Trump Administration\u2019s decision to remove the most recent version of the Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses manual from DOJ\u2019s website without explanation.\n\nOn April 29, she was tapped by Minority Leader Schumer to join a task force of senators defending our elections from interference.\n\nOn April 23, she joined colleagues in introducing the Absentee and Mail Voter Protection Act to protect the right to vote by mail and block President Trump\u2019s illegal and unconstitutional March 31 executive order attacking mail and absentee ballots.\n\nOn April 22, she sent a letter to the USPS warning the agency against complying with the executive order, which would undermine mail-in voting.\n\nOn April 1, after the executive order on mail-in voting was announced, she issued a statement in opposition.\n\nOn March 18, she convened a group of current and former elected officials and representatives of nonpartisan voter advocacy groups for a virtual press conference on defending voter access. Video of that entire virtual press conference is HERE; video of Sen. Cantwell\u2019s statement is HERE; and a transcript of Sen. Cantwell\u2019s statement is HERE.\n\nOn March 15, she issued a snapshot report showing that the SAVE America Act \u2013 the voter suppression bill President Trump has continued to demand Congress pass \u2013 would cost Washington state taxpayers more than $35 million this year alone.\n\nOn Feb. 20, she convened local leaders in Seattle for a press conference urging Washingtonians to fight back against these proposed new burdens to voting.\n\nOn Feb. 19, she gathered in Vancouver with the Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey and local chapter heads of the League of Women Voters and the NAACP for a press conference on how this bill would disenfranchise voters.\n\nAlso on Feb. 19, she released a snapshot report showing who in Washington would face undue hurdles to voting if the SAVE America Act were signed into law. The report shows that certain populations \u2013 including people who live in rural areas, women who changed their name after marriage, and people who recently moved \u2013 would face additional, cumbersome burdens to prove their citizenship.\n\nOn Feb. 5, she appeared on MSNOW\u2019s Morning Joe to push back against the Trump administration\u2019s heightened efforts to interfere in state-run elections and collect private data on American voters. Video of Sen. Cantwell\u2019s appearance is HERE; a transcript is HERE.\n\nOn Jan. 29, Sen. Cantwell joined Senate colleagues in a letter to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, pushing DOJ to stop its unlawful pressure campaign to coerce dozens of states into providing the Trump Administration their voter rolls, which include voters\u2019 personally identifiable information. DOJ has sued 24 states \u2013 including Washington state \u2013 and the District of Columbia demanding the personal information of their voters.\n\nOn Jan. 15, she joined Senate colleagues in a letter to USPS Postmaster General David Steiner raising concerns with recent developments affecting postmark practices. Right before the holiday season, USPS changed its postmark practices, which the Senators warned could have significant impacts on voters nationwide and in Washington state \u2013 including rural voters, military and overseas voters, and many others who rely on rely on the mail to safely and securely cast their ballot. The new snapshot report Sen. Cantwell and Sec. Hobbs released today shows the actual impact on voters in Washington state so far.\n\nOn Jan. 9, she joined 13 Senate colleagues in filing an amicus brief before the Supreme Court in the case Watson v. Republican National Committee. The case, brought by the Republican National Committee, threatened the election administration practices of states like Washington that permit mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day to be counted when they are received within a certain number of days after Election Day.\n\nPrevious Article", 1, "2026-09-03T09:29:33Z", "2026-09-03T09:31:32Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.cantwell.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cast-but-never-counted-cantwell-and-secretary-of-state-hobbs-say-trumps-usps-suppressing-wa-mail-in-voting-by-postmarking-or-delivering-ballots-after-election-day"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.815757957752794, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}