Hundreds of Whitman County ballots never arrived to voters, auditor says

Hundreds of ballots in Whitman County are missing after being processed by the U.S. Postal Service in Spokane.

An estimated 200 to 300 ballots have not made it to voters, said Whitman County Auditor Sandy Jamison. The post office is investigating.

Whitman County has a third-party vendor that inserts the ballots into envelopes and drives them to a main processing facility, like in Spokane and most other Washington counties. Jamison said she knows the ballots made it to the facility, but when she checked the Postal Service report last week, it showed 99.6% of the ballots were successfully processed.

“My question is, where are my missing ballots?” she said.

Jamison said she was able to narrow it down to people with P.O. boxes in the town of Garfield.

“We don’t know who is missing a ballot, we only know because we are getting calls,” she said. “We are all concerned.”

With a week left until the general election, Jamison is urging people to double-check their ballot status online at voteWA.gov and ask for a replacement ballot as soon as possible.

“Here in Whitman County, my goal is everyone gets a ballot and can participate. But they will need to be proactive with us,” she said. “Time is of the essence here.”

This is a developing story.