Postal Service change could prevent some mail ballots from being counted in Washoe County

If you plan to cast your ballot by mail this election, the early bird gets the worm — or, in this case, the vote. 

Under a seemingly simple rule the Postal Service finalized last year, mail is now postmarked when it reaches a processing facility, not when it goes into a mailbox. 

That means a ballot dropped in a blue box on Election Day evening may not be postmarked until the next day — making it ineligible, as mail ballots must be postmarked by the day of the election to count. In the rule, the Postal Service acknowledged its changes would make it "more common" for a postmark date not to match the date the agency first received a piece of mail.

The Postal Service has also stopped some evening mail pickups as part of a cost-cutting effort, meaning mail dropped off late in the day may not be postmarked until the next day. In Nevada, the change applies to 61 ZIP codes across the northern half of the state, including much of Reno and Sparks, Carson City, Elko and Winnemucca, according to a Postal Service filing with federal regulators. 

No ZIP codes in Clark County are on the list, and the Postal Service has said no new ZIP codes will be added before Election Day.

In Washoe County's June primary, 1,837 mail ballots were rejected because they were postmarked after Election Day, according to the county registrar's office. Nearly all of them reached the county within the four days Nevada allows for late-arriving ballots, but their late postmarks meant they couldn't be counted.

With mail ballots now going out for the Nov. 3 general election, the primary results offer a warning for voters who plan to mail theirs closer to Election Day. 

About 4 percent of the roughly 42,000 ballots Washoe voters returned through the Postal Service in the primary, rather than at a drop box, were rejected for late postmarks, according to a Nevada Independent analysis of the county's final mail ballot data. That made late postmarks the most common reason the county rejected a mail ballot, accounting for about 71 percent of all rejections. Signature problems made up most of the rest.

The number of late postmarks was an increase from past elections, said George Guthrie, a spokesperson for the Washoe County Registrar of Voters. He said the increase is likely due to those changes at the Postal Service, which now advises that a same-day postmark is not guaranteed.

Read more: Want to vote by mail? Nevada officials say to do it a week early to avoid snafus

Election officials across the state tried to warn voters about the changes, Guthrie said, because they increase "the chance your ballot may not be counted if you drop it off with the post office on Election Day."

Statewide, 4,349 mail ballots were rejected for arriving too late in the June primary, according to the Nevada Secretary of State's office. 

"A timely postmark alone is not enough," Stacey Sunday, a spokesperson for the office, said in an email. Mail ballots must be postmarked by Nov. 3 and received by county election offices by Nov. 7 in order to count, she said.

The pattern matches what Democracy Docket, a voting rights news platform founded by Democratic attorney Marc Elias, found nationally. In six states that published detailed data on 2026 primary rejections, about 64 percent of rejected mail ballots were thrown out because they arrived late. In the 2024 and 2022 general elections, federal data shows late ballots made up 17.8 percent and 23.1 percent of rejections nationally, respectively.

Washoe County has launched a campaign urging voters to return their ballots early. Nearly 13,000 mail ballots, about 20 percent of those cast in the primary, arrived on Election Day, which delayed results reporting. With turnout expected to roughly double in the general election, the county estimates that more than 25,000 ballots could arrive on Election Day.

"By returning your mail ballot early, you can avoid the confusion and concern about postmark dates or whether your ballot will arrive on time, and allow more time for you to resolve any signature challenges that may arise," Guthrie said.

The registrar's office is encouraging voters to mail their ballot or return it to a drop box by 6 p.m. Oct. 30, the last day of early voting. After that, voters should return their ballot directly to the registrar's office or to a drop box at any Election Day vote center. Washoe County has 18 vote centers open for early voting and 41 on Election Day, each with a drop box.

The Postal Service also no longer counts Sundays in its delivery times, so a ballot mailed on a Saturday may take an extra day to arrive. Voters who decide to mail their ballot can hand it to a clerk at a post office counter and ask for a postmark that day. Voters can also track their ballot online to confirm it was received and counted.