Ballots found discarded or stolen from the mail in Seattle, Daly City and Escondido, with no reported vote tampering so far (Oct. 2026)

Case

In October 2026, ballots mailed to voters were found in a Seattle park dumpster (92 ballots, reported Oct. 23), reported stolen from a Daly City, California post office (about Oct. 14), and found scattered on a roadside near Escondido, California (12 unvoted packets, Oct. 8). In each place election officials said replacement ballots were issued or available and that only one ballot per voter is counted. No report found shows votes altered, and the cause in each case is unconfirmed pending postal investigations.

Seattle: 92 ballots in a park dumpster (reported Oct. 23, 2026)
A voter called the King County Elections customer service line to report mail discarded in a dumpster. Staff went to Golden Gardens Park and found two bins of mail that included 92 ballots, according to Chief of Staff Kendall Hodson.
King County Elections reported the incident to the U.S. Postal Service, which said the matter is with the USPS Office of Inspector General. The ballots have already been reissued to the affected voters.
Hodson said mail theft continues during election season, that the county hears of a handful of incidents of ballots tossed after mail theft in each big election, and that law enforcement partners tell it ballots are typically not the target, as shown by their being left behind.
Elections spokesperson Halei Watkins said each ballot has its own ballot ID, the county accepts only one ballot per voter, and every signature on every ballot is verified.
Who discarded the mail and why has not been reported.

Daly City, California: ballots stolen from a post office (about Oct. 14, 2026)
San Mateo County vote-by-mail ballots were stolen from a Daly City post office on a Wednesday (Oct. 14, 2026), county elections officials said; the exact number of ballots stolen is not known.
Voters worried their ballot was affected can request a replacement at any San Mateo County vote center or online; online requests should be made by Oct. 27 to leave time for mailing. The county said only the first ballot received and accepted is counted.
The U.S. Postal Service is investigating, and the county is in contact with USPS.

Escondido, California: roadside ballot packets (Oct. 8, 2026)
On Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, a resident found a few dozen pieces of election mail, about half of them unsigned ballots, scattered along Lake Wohlford Road near Escondido. Another driver collected them and took them to the Valley Center Post Office before deputies arrived.
The San Diego County Registrar of Voters said 12 unvoted mail ballot packets and 14 voter information pamphlets were found, and that USPS confirmed the materials were redelivered to addresses in Pauma Valley and Valley Center.
The registrar said there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in San Diego County and that it works with the Postal Inspection Service to investigate reports of potential mail-ballot tampering; a voter KGTV reached said she was told to check whether anyone had voted in her name.
The resident who found them, who identifies as a Republican, said the only mail on the road was ballots and voter guides, which he took as doubt that a mailbag simply fell from a truck, and said the case shows greater concern is needed for the chain of custody of ballots (his view, not established).

Note
Why the mail was discarded is unconfirmed: King County's chief of staff says ballots are typically not the target in mail theft, while critics of mail voting point to such cases as a chain-of-custody weakness.

Sources
[1] KOMO News — Dozens of undelivered ballots found in dumpster at Seattle park (https://komonews.com/news/local/undelivered-ballots-dumpster-seattle-golden-gardens-park-midterm-election-discarded-mail-voting-security-king-county-elections-replacement-ballot-registered-voters) · 2026-10-23
[2] KGTV 10News San Diego — Mail-in ballots strewn along North County road (https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/mail-in-ballots-strewn-along-north-county-road) · 2026-10-09
[3] KTVU — San Mateo County voters urged to check ballot status after mail theft at Daly City post office (https://www.ktvu.com/news/ballots-stolen-mail-theft-daily-city-post-office) · 2026-10
[4] Bay City News via Local News Matters — San Mateo County voters urged to verify ballot status after theft in Daly City (https://localnewsmatters.org/2026/10/16/san-mateo-county-stolen-mail-in-ballots/) · 2026-10-16

Connections

Related — Election claims tracker: fraud allegations, federal actions and what the evidence shows (Nov. 2026 midterms)
Hub entry for fraud claims and what the evidence shows; these mail-handling cases are a recurring source of tampering claims.

Same context — Election denial and interference efforts before the Nov. 2026 midterms: pardons, the Tina Peters case, Georgia's federal-intervention letters and National Guard troops near a DC ballot box
Mail-handling cases that feed tampering claims in the weeks before the Nov. 2026 midterms, set against the wider record of election denial and interference efforts.