Mail-In Ballots Stolen From San Mateo Post Office, Election Officials Say
An unknown number of San Mateo County vote-by-mail ballots were reportedly stolen from a Daly City post office, county election officials said.
The county’s Registration and Elections Division said Thursday that the U.S. Postal Inspection Service is investigating the incident of mail theft — which was reported to county elections officials on Wednesday — that included the ballots.
It’s unclear how many ballots were affected by the theft.
Elections officials didn’t respond to a request for comment, but Assistant Chief Elections Officer Jim Irizarry told the San Mateo Daily Journal that there didn’t appear to be a reason to assume it was an attempt to intentionally tamper with voting.
A 2025 Brookings study found that cases of mail voting fraud are “very rare.” Four cases out of 10 million mail-in votes are fraudulent, that research shows.
In June, a little over two dozen ballots in Santa Clara County were found among recovered stolen mail. But federal investigators said it did not seem the perpetrators targeted election-related mail.
If voters are concerned that their ballots have been impacted, the Elections Division said they can request a replacement ballot online or at a county vote center. Online requests for a replacement must be submitted by Oct. 27.
Only one ballot that each voter submits will be counted.
“Each Vote-by-Mail ballot is associated with an individual voter, and ballot processing safeguards prevent duplicate ballots from being counted for the same voter,” the division said in a statement.
Voters can track the status of their vote-by-mail ballots through the secretary of state’s “Where’s My Ballot” service.
USPIS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigation.