by Jerry Cornfield, Washington State Standard
April 17, 2026
King County election officials want to know how a box of ballots wound up next to a dumpster behind a strip mall in Renton, then in the hands of the Washington State Republican Party leader this week.
Roughly 400 ballots, most unopened and unvoted, were brought to the Bellevue headquarters of the state party on Thursday, chairman Jim Walsh said. They were for primary and general elections from 2022 to 2025, he said.
“This is proof that Washington state elections are not secure,” Walsh said in a video posted to social media Thursday, in which he appeared seated at a table with stacks of the ballots. “This is the reason we need to do better by election integrity and election security in Washington state.”
Walsh has backed the idea of ending mail-in voting and is pushing an initiative this year to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in Washington state.
As of Friday afternoon, Walsh remained in possession of the ballots as the United States Postal Inspection Service and the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office are investigating.
He shared an email from a U.S. postal inspector who asked for more information about the matter. The inspector also said the FBI wanted to get involved.
If postal inspectors don’t take the ballots, they will be turned over to King County Elections, Walsh said.
In the video, Walsh said a “concerned citizen” found the box and attempted to contact King County Elections and the secretary of state’s office, but got no response.
Elaborating in an interview, he said the discovery occurred in mid-February and the man who found the ballots tried to reach county and state election officials several days later. Walsh said he learned of the ballots last week and arranged to have them brought to the party office on Thursday.
“Despite the claims made in the video, we have no record of anyone contacting our office to report finding a box of undelivered ballots,” said Halei Watkins, communications manager for King County Elections. “If this person had spoken to anyone on our team, we would have absolutely asked them to bring the box to us so we could investigate.”
The secretary of state’s office also received no reports of the situation by phone, email, our website or direct messages on social media.
“If a person finds undelivered mail that has been improperly disposed of, there are several steps they should take to ensure it is fully investigated. Posting a video on social media is not one of them,” said Secretary of State Steve Hobbs.
The vast majority of ballots were mailed to people who rent boxes at a private mail handling center in Renton, according to Walsh. They were “largely unvoted and unopened” but Walsh said he found one ballot addressed to a person who records show did vote in the same election.
Walsh, in the video, cautioned that “a bad actor” could have got one of the ballots and used the information to request a replacement ballot. He said he would be pressing Hobbs for an explanation of why so many ballots were not returned to election offices and destroyed.
On Friday, Hobbs and Watkins stressed there are safeguards against such behavior.
“Washington elections are safe and secure,” Hobbs said. “We check the signature on every ballot to determine that the ballot sent to a voter was signed and returned by that voter.”
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