A theft at a Daly City post office reportedly included an unknown number of San Mateo County mail-in ballots, county election officials said, prompting a push to help affected voters track or replace their ballots before next month's election. The San Mateo County Registration & Elections Division said it was notified of the mail theft on October 14, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service is now investigating.
The incident was reported by the San Mateo Daily Journal, which detailed how the theft affected general mail that happened to include ballots, rather than appearing to be a targeted hit on voting materials. Jim Irizarry, the county's assistant chief elections officer, said the U.S. Postal Inspection Service is investigating the theft from the Daly City post office, according to the paper's reporting. The newspaper also reported that a U.S. Postal Inspection Service spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigation.
The San Mateo County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder & Elections office confirmed it was notified of the mail theft incident at a Daly City post office on October 14. The office has not said the theft represented an intentional effort to tamper with voting activity, according to the Daily Journal's reporting, and officials are instead treating it as a mail-handling issue that happened to sweep up ballots along with other letters and packages.
How Voters Can Check Their Ballot Status
Potentially impacted voters can check their ballot status online, and the elections office has said it will reach out directly to voters whose ballot envelopes show signs of tampering. Residents can track their ballots and confirm whether they have been received through the county's own portal, as The Almanac has noted in its coverage of similar mail-theft incidents affecting San Mateo County ballots. Voters who believe their ballot may have been swept up in the theft can request a replacement, either in person or online.
Ballot envelopes that show signs of tampering are not counted toward the election, and all mail-in ballot envelopes go through signature verification as a check against fraud. Once a voter requests a replacement ballot, the original is automatically voided, the same report noted, meaning only the newest ballot submitted under a voter's name will count.
Deadlines as Election Day Approaches
Potentially affected voters, along with anyone who has not yet received a mail-in ballot, should request a new one by October 27, 2026, if they plan to rely on postal delivery. Election Day falls on November 3, and mail-in ballots must be postmarked by midnight that day to count. As the deadline nears, voters using the U.S. Postal Service are encouraged to make sure their ballots get stamped with that date rather than risk a late postmark.
Voters running into ballot issues are also encouraged to visit an in-person voting center rather than wait on the mail. Support locations include the South San Francisco Public Library at 901 Civic Campus Way, the Redwood City Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder's office at the County Center, and the San Mateo Registration and Elections Division office at 40 Tower Road.
Not the First Mail-Theft Scare for County Voters
This is not the first time San Mateo County ballots have gone missing from the mail. Last October, several ballots and other mail were stolen from mailboxes in the Emerald Hills neighborhood of Redwood City sometime between October 4 and October 6, 2025, according to The Almanac. Five voters in that neighborhood notified the county's Registration and Elections Division that their ballots may have been stolen, and each requested a replacement.
That scare came during a special election; the elections office logged only 15 replacement-ballot requests in the first week of that contest, compared with 91 in the first week of the November 2024 presidential general election, per the same Almanac report. Comparable incidents have surfaced elsewhere in California, too. In Sacramento's College Glen area, a mail-truck break-in raised concerns that election ballots had been swept up alongside other mail, according to The Sacramento Bee. A Postal Inspection Service official in that case said he had not confirmed that ballots were actually stolen, even as the agency offered a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
For now, San Mateo County voters whose ballots may have been caught up in the Daly City theft are being told to rely on the same tools available to anyone worried about a missing ballot: check status online, request a replacement if needed, or head to an in-person voting location before Election Day arrives.
