A new federal audit has exposed serious failures in the U.S. Postal Service’s handling of election mail during the 2026 primary season, including incorrectly postmarked ballots, missing tracking information, delayed deliveries and ballots shipped hundreds of miles in the wrong direction.
ProPublica first reported the audit on September 9. The watchdog’s report is public: Processing of Election and Political Mail for the 2026 Primary Elections.
The September 4 audit by the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General examined nine mail-processing facilities and 73 delivery units across eight states between March and May.
While auditors found that most facilities generally followed election-mail procedures, and overall processing scores improved from the 2024 primaries, they also uncovered alarming breakdowns that could determine whether a lawful vote is counted.
The report found that management at 10 of the 82 facilities reviewed was unfamiliar with proper ballot-postmarking policies.
At five of nine mail-processing facilities, auditors discovered hand-canceling devices displaying incorrect dates.
At the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, processing center, a hand canceler being used on the May 19 primary election date was still set to March 19.
According to the audit, the mistake caused at least 56 ballots to receive the wrong postmark. Those ballots were not delivered in time to be counted.
Another hand canceler in Cincinnati was inexplicably set to “April 43, 2013,” a date that does not even exist.
Auditors also found nine unsecured hand cancelers at facilities in Portland, Oregon, and Cincinnati.
As of June, 14 states, Washington, D.C., and several U.S. territories relied on postmarks to determine whether ballots were eligible to be counted.
The audit further revealed that 13 of 82 facilities failed to accurately complete required “all-clear” certifications intended to confirm that no election mail remained stranded inside postal facilities.
Among approximately 1.27 million pieces of election and political mail processed at the facilities visited, auditors identified 214 delayed pieces, including 115 ballots.
Postal workers recovered 110 of those ballots in time, but five missed the deadline for delivery to election officials.
At the Harrisburg facility, auditors found 108 voter-returned ballots inside the Postal Automated Redirection System, even though USPS guidance explicitly states that returned ballots should never enter that operation. The ballots were discovered on Election Day and rushed to Pittsburgh before Pennsylvania’s 8 p.m. deadline.
Training failures were also widespread.
Auditors found no election-related training materials posted at 22 of the 73 delivery units inspected, roughly 30 percent. USPS headquarters claimed posting the materials was merely a “best practice,” despite its own certification process asking whether the materials had been posted and shared with employees.
The most stunning tracking failure occurred in New Jersey.
Postal workers transferred pallets of primary ballots into different containers but failed to move the tracking labels with them. The Postal Service consequently lost the ability to identify and monitor the containers as ballot mail.
The ballots were supposed to remain in New Jersey. Instead, they were left aboard a trailer and shipped all the way to Memphis, Tennessee.
They traveled through the Memphis network without being tracked before finally returning to New Jersey seven days after USPS first accepted them. The ballots were ultimately delivered weeks before the June 2 primary, meaning voters still had time to return them, but the episode exposed a major hole in the agency’s tracking system.
In North Carolina, auditors examined 171 ballots destined for Buncombe County and determined that 81, approximately 47 percent—arrived outside the Postal Service’s one-to-five-day delivery standard.
Some ballots were also rejected by postal equipment because their barcodes were smudged, misaligned or accompanied by multiple barcodes. The inspector general cautioned that the North Carolina delays did not appear to constitute a systemic problem within Buncombe County because the ballots originated from multiple facilities across 18 states.
The audit made 11 recommendations. USPS management agreed with ten and rejected one involving localized public notices about transportation changes. The agency nevertheless agreed to halt operational changes beginning October 17 to avoid disrupting election-season mail.
The Postal Service also plans to employ “extraordinary measures” to accelerate identifiable ballot mail beginning October 27 and continuing through Election Day.
The report lands as Democrats, left-wing legal groups and even several Republican election officials fight President Trump’s attempt to impose tougher tracking and identification requirements on federal mail ballots.
As The Gateway Pundit reported, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and five other Republican secretaries of state have urged the Supreme Court to prevent Trump’s new USPS ballot safeguards from taking effect during the 2026 midterms.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that left-wing activist Norm Eisen defended mass mail-in voting while simultaneously admitting that USPS struggles to deliver ordinary mail on time.
The post USPS Inspector General Confirms It: Postal Facilities Botched Mail Ballots in the 2026 Primaries — Wrong Dates in Pennsylvania, No Training on the Wall, and Delayed Ballots Headed Into a Midterm Fight appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.