A Santa Fe couple found 11 completed absentee ballots belonging to other voters in mail held while they were away on vacation. County Clerk Katharine Clark retrieved the ballots herself that night, driving through flooding during a tornado warning.
Clark said she learned about the ballots from a Nextdoor post on Saturday night, according to KOAT. She went to the couple’s home and said all 11 appeared untouched: “None of them had been tampered with,” she told the station.
Clark put the ballots in a ballot bag and took them directly to the warehouse to be counted, KOAT reported. She said her office had alerted postal officials. The U.S. Postal Service told the station it had received a request for comment and was looking into the matter.
A Mistake, Not Necessarily Malice
Clark said the misdelivery might have been a mistake rather than intentional wrongdoing. She described such incidents as rare, while saying she had raised concerns about Santa Fe mail delivery for years. She also said mail service faces heavy pressure during election cycles, with congressional offices and election officials fielding complaints, according to KOAT.
Clark cited staffing shortages as one possible contributor. She said the Postal Service has brought in workers from Rio Rancho to cover Santa Fe routes, but that those fill-in carriers may not know the routes well. She also said longtime postal workers are retiring without being replaced and that pay has not kept pace, while emphasizing that postal employees work hard during election season, KOAT reported.
Clark also said that additional processing stops can raise the chance of errors: many mailed ballots in New Mexico pass through Albuquerque before returning to county clerk offices, KOAT reported. She has advised voters to use county drop boxes rather than rely on the mail. In separate 2024 guidance, Santa Fe Reporter reported that Clark told voters who had requested absentee ballots before the Oct. 22 deadline to drop them off rather than mail them, noting that county locations were open 24 hours a day.
A Strained Mail System Nationwide
The Santa Fe mix-up arrives amid broader reporting on USPS ballot-handling changes this election cycle. NPR reported that USPS has been rolling out reduced daily mail pickups and processing changes at certain post offices since April 2025, changes that may prevent the agency from automatically postmarking ballots the same day they are collected or dropped off. A Brookings Institution analysis cited by NPR estimated that those transportation changes could result in an additional 43,000 to 55,000 ballots nationwide being rejected for arriving late.
ProPublica reported that USPS consolidated first-class mail processing at larger regional plants and cut mail pickups in half at many post offices 50 miles or more from those plants following the 2024 election, shifting from twice-daily to once-daily pickups. In 11 predominantly rural eastern Washington counties, nearly 2,000 ballots arrived late in this year's primary compared with about 600 in 2022, according to ProPublica. USPS leaders have said managers should separate completed ballots from other first-class mail during the 10 days before the Nov. 3 election and deliver local election-office ballots the day they arrive, per the outlet's reporting.
USPS has pushed back on characterizations of widespread disruption. The agency said that as of October 9, 97.98% of ballot mail was delivered on time and that its national network was operating without major reported disruptions, according to a USPS news release. The agency also said it began extraordinary ballot-mail processing and transportation measures nationwide on Oct. 24 and pointed to its 2024 performance, when it delivered 99.6% of ballots to election officials within three days. USPS advises domestic voters to mail completed ballots before Election Day and at least one week before they must be received by election offices.
Misdirected Ballots Reported Beyond Santa Fe
Santa Fe County has also experienced other ballot-routing errors this cycle. Clark said seven ballots intended for her office were mistakenly sent to Los Angeles County and arrived after New Mexico’s counting deadline, according to reporting carried by The Independent. Her office also received two ballots meant for Los Angeles County and one for Maricopa County, Arizona, which she returned to the Postal Service; nine ballots intended for other New Mexico counties were delivered to Santa Fe County. Election offices in California, Louisiana, New Mexico and elsewhere have reported receiving completed ballots meant for other states, the report said.
A separate misdirection case
In November 2024, Cascade County, Montana, received about a dozen completed ballots from voters elsewhere, including Alaska, Washington and Florida, The Associated Press reported. Unlike the Santa Fe incident, those ballots were misdirected to an election office rather than found in a couple’s held mail.
Reuters has reported that USPS delivered 99.2 million ballots to and from voters during the 2024 presidential election, underscoring the scale of the system now under scrutiny ahead of this year's vote. New Mexico's Secretary of State advises voters who request absentee ballots through their county clerk to return mailed ballots as early as possible and identifies drop-off options as an alternative, according to the New Mexico Secretary of State.
New Mexico ballot-return rules
The New Mexico Secretary of State advises voters to return mailed absentee ballots as early as possible. Under the state’s guidance, ballots may be returned to a county clerk’s office or any Election Day polling location by 7 p.m. on Election Day, according to the New Mexico Secretary of State. If a mailed ballot has not arrived by Election Day, voters may still go to a polling place and vote after signing an affidavit canceling the mailed ballot, the Secretary of State says.
