Fraud concerns as 500 blank ballots from recent elections found near Renton dumpster<\/a><\/p>\nWalsh said a man from Renton found a box of roughly 500 ballots spanning multiple election cycles – many from 2022 through 2025 – behind the strip mall in February. <\/p>\n
Walsh first posted a video regarding the ballots on April 16.<\/p>\n
King County Elections said it is now working with local and federal partners, including the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Renton Police Department, and the FBI, because the mail includes federal and out-of-state election materials.<\/p>\n
Initial findings indicate the ballots were sent to voters but never retrieved.<\/p>\n
\u201cUpon initial review, the ballots appear to all be outgoing ballots that were not picked up by the voter after being delivered to a private mailbox location,\u201d the agency said.<\/p>\n
Walsh, who said he received the ballots from the person who found them, raised concerns about potential weaknesses in Washington\u2019s vote-by-mail system, calling the situation a \u201cbroken chain of custody\u201d and an \u201cinvitation to fraud,\u201d though he stopped short of alleging wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
Walsh said someone could potentially use information on ballot envelopes to request replacement ballots, though doing so would be illegal.<\/p>\n
Election officials pushed back on those claims, emphasizing that the ballots had not been returned or counted and that safeguards are in place to prevent misuse.<\/p>\n
King County Director of Elections Julie Wise criticized Walsh for publicizing the ballots instead of immediately turning them over to authorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is clearly an effort to push a false narrative about elections and vote-by-mail,\u201d Wise said. \u201cThere was no opportunity for fraud here, and holding onto other people\u2019s ballots to make a public spectacle is unethical.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wise’s statement reads in full:<\/p>\n
\u201cRepresentative Walsh claims to care about the security of our elections and the health of our democracy. If that were the case, the responsible thing to do would have been to immediately turn over any undelivered mail to the authorities. This is clearly an effort to push a false narrative about elections and vote-by-mail. There was no opportunity for fraud here, and holding onto other people\u2019s ballots to make a public spectacle is unethical. I am grateful for the quick work of our law enforcement partners to take custody of these ballots, and for all they do to protect elections and election workers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Secretary of State\u2019s Office said it has been involved in the response and urged the public to follow proper procedures when encountering election materials.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf someone comes across an undelivered ballot, they should return it to the sender,\u201d Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said. \u201cThey should be turned over to law enforcement when requested, not opened or posted on social media.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials said King County Elections and the King County Prosecuting Attorney\u2019s Office will assist investigators as they determine how the ballots ended up at the location.<\/p>\n
While the discovery has fueled debate over election security, state and county officials said Washington\u2019s vote-by-mail system includes multiple safeguards. Ballots are tied to individual voters, and only one ballot per voter can be counted. Signatures on returned ballots must match voter registration records, and voters are contacted if there are discrepancies.<\/p>\n
King County Elections sends more than 1.4 million ballots each election cycle, and voters who do not receive a ballot can request a replacement. Even if multiple ballots are issued, only one can be accepted and counted.<\/p>\n
The investigation remains ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RENTON, Wash. \u2014 Federal authorities have taken custody of a batch of election mail found near a Renton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-599466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}