Thousands of voters in Washington and Oregon had their ballots rejected in this year’s primaries because the ballots received postmarks after Election Day, raising concerns that Postal Service changes are creating new hurdles for voting by mail. Oregon rejected 7,314 ballots that arrived during the state’s one-week grace period after its May primary because they were postmarked late, Secretary of State Tobias Read said. That amounted to 13% of ballots received during the period, up from 9.5% two years earlier. Washington counted 20,267 ballots with late postmarks in its recent primary, up from 16,131 in 2024, according to state figures. The increase has persisted despite a rise in drop-box use after officials urged voters to return ballots earlier. The Postal Service has consolidated operations around regional processing centers and, since last year, has transported mail once a day rather than twice from post offices and collection boxes more than 50 miles from a distribution center. A rule finalized in December clarified that a postmark may reflect when mail is handled at a processing center, not when the Postal Service first receives it. For communities farther from those centers, that gap can mean a ballot put in the mail before Election Day gets a later postmark. The agency acknowledged that transportation changes could delay postmarks and advised voters to mail ballots at least a week before they are due. Voters can also ask at a post office for a free manual postmark, the Postal Service said. Rural communities have been especially affected, as residents may have fewer nearby ballot drop boxes and rely more on the mail. In Stevens County in northeastern Washington, the rate of mailed ballots rejected for late postmarks quadrupled. County Auditor Lori Larsen said her office received 547 late-postmarked ballots on Aug. 7, three days after the primary and during the state’s arrival grace period. Larsen said the volume initially led her to wonder whether wildfires had disrupted mail service. After checking the ballots’ ZIP codes, she concluded that was not the explanation. Her office is working to double the county’s secure drop boxes, from five to 10. In Yakima County, nearly 4.4% of ballots cast in the primary were rejected for late postmarks. Auditor Charles Ross said local mail is now routed through a processing center in Spokane, about 200 miles away. He warned that ballots placed in mailboxes the same number of days before an election may be treated differently depending on whether voters live in rural areas or larger cities. Oregon’s Read is seeking emergency funding for 20 additional drop boxes in areas where they are difficult to access. Washington’s secretary of state has spent about $300,000 this year reimbursing counties for 21 new boxes. In two rural Washington counties that reliably support President Donald Trump, late-postmarked ballots made up more than 4% of ballots cast in the primary. The changes are intensifying concerns about access to mail voting, which is widely used in Western states and accounts for nearly one-third of votes nationally. Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell said postal policies were leaving voters with ballots that had been cast but not counted. President Trump has repeatedly made false claims that mail voting is rife with fraud, and his administration recently asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling blocking an executive order seeking to restrict the practice.