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BELLEVUE—Hundreds of undelivered, mostly blank ballots from multiple election cycles were discovered in February 2026 next to a dumpster behind a Renton strip mall, later turned over to Washington State Republican Party Chairman Jim Walsh and are now under federal investigation by U.S. Postal Inspectors, with the FBI expressing interest.

The discovery of almost 500 dumped ballots is of concern regarding ballot chain of custody in Washington’s all-mail voting system, Chair Walsh says even as state election officials insist that elections remain secure and who are in a legal clash with the Trump administration over federal efforts to tighten mail-ballot procedures.

“This is not election security,” Walsh said in a video on X announcing that he received a box from a concerned citizen with hundreds of undelivered ballots found in a dumpster. “When King County Elections is sending ballots to mailboxes where people never pick them up and they sit somewhere in a room somewhere gathering dust and then end up being put in a box on the ground next to a dumpster in Renton, this is what a broken chain of custody for these election ballots looks like. This is an invitation to fraud.”

Most of the ballots were addressed to private mailboxes rented through Mail Box Express, a storefront mail service in Renton, rather than U.S. Postal Service boxes. The citizen told Walsh he tried contacting King County Elections, Secretary of State Steve Hobbs’ office and a congressional representative but received no response, resulting in him delivering the box with up to 500 undelivered ballots to the Washington GOP’s Bellevue office on April 16.

King County Elections and the Secretary of State’s office have said they have no record of any such contact from the concerned citizen.

“If a person finds undelivered mail that has been improperly disposed of, there are several steps they should take to ensure it is fully investigated. Posting a video on social media is not one of them,” Secretary Hobbs told the Washington State Standard.

In the video posted on the WAGOP’s X account, Chair Walsh held up stacks of envelopes and described the contents as proof of systemic vote-by-mail problems.

“This is proof that Washington state elections are not secure,” Walsh said. “These ballots were largely unvoted, unopened, so there are blank ballots inside all of these envelopes…. This is not election security.”

The ballots spanned primaries and general elections from 2022 through 2025, primarily from King County with some from Snohomish County. Walsh, in a KING 5 interview, said his staff opened a small number of envelopes that were already unsealed to confirm these contained real ballots, which were blank. Many appeared to have been sent but never picked up by recipients who had rented private mailboxes, said Walsh.

Walsh shared that at least one 2024 general-election ballot in the box was addressed to a voter who, according to public records, cast a ballot that November and suggested that the voter may had requested and used a replacement—his office is further investigating. He added that checks on a small sample showed about half the named voters had participated in the corresponding election.

King County Elections Director Julie Wise in a statement to KING 5 alleged that Walsh is exploiting the incident to “push a false narrative about elections and vote-by-mail.”  She asserted that “there was no opportunity for fraud” and chastised Walsh for “holding onto other people’s ballots” calling it a “public spectacle.”

Secretary Hobbs echoed Wise’s comments that “Washington elections are safe and secure” and that every ballot’s signature is verified to determine that the intended voter “returned” their ballot.

Walsh argues that discarded ballots expose a vulnerability that election officials do not want to acknowledge—undelivered ballots that should have been returned to election officials or destroyed but instead sat unclaimed for years and ended up improperly disposed of in a Renton strip mall dumpster.

“This is the broken chain of custody for these election ballots,” Walsh said. “This is an invitation to fraud. A bad actor who picked up these ballots might realize they could request a replacement ballot for one of these people and vote their ballot.”

He tied the incident to outdated voter rolls and lack of proof-of-citizenship requirements, promoting the GOP-backed Initiative 26-500 for voter ID.

This latest ballot saga is occurring as Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown is co-leading a legal fight against President Donald J Trump’s March 31 executive order, “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.” The executive order directs federal agencies to create citizenship lists for states and requires the Postal Service to use tracked, secure “Official Election Mail” envelopes with barcodes for outbound ballots, limiting delivery to verified lists. Noncompliance of the order could result in states losing funds or federal prosecution of state officials.

AG Brown called the Trump administration’s actions an unconstitutional federal power grab that threatens Washington state’s long-standing all-mail system.

“Mail-in voting is safe and legal in Washington. We will do everything we can to defend it. And come November, despite the president’s lawless threats, we’ll once again use that power to protect our democracy,” Brown said.

Secretary Hobbs objected to the executive order stating earlier this month that it exceeds presidential authority and threatens Washington’s vote-by-mail system.

President Trump signed a broader election integrity executive order a year earlier on March 25, 2025, titled, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” in what his administration considers multiple “gaps” in election security. According to this E.O.:

• Election Assistance Commission must add documentary proof of citizenship to the national mail voter registration form.
• Federal agencies (DHS, SSA, State Dept.) must give states access to databases for verification.
• Strict Election Day receipt deadline for ballots (no counting late arrivals in federal races).
• Voter-verifiable paper records required for voting systems.
• Prioritize DOJ prosecutions and information-sharing agreements.
• Federal funding conditioned on state compliance.

Washington election officials attest that the state’s existing all-mail voting system works and the federal mandates risk disenfranchisement without much evidence of widespread problems.

The investigation continues as Postal Inspectors now have the approximately 500 undelivered ballots. So far, no charges have been announced.

Author: Mario Lotmore