Takeaways
- Mail-in voting, a big part of Cascadia’s democracy infrastructure, is facing challenges:
- The US Postal Service has consolidated processing centers, delaying postmarks and deliveries;
- A US Supreme Court case might require more stringent ballot deadlines; and
- Congress and President Trump are trying to impose additional barriers or even an outright ban.
- Four in five Cascadians rely on receiving their ballots by mail, including in rural and urban areas, so these pressures could have a widespread impact throughout the region.
- In the states that allow it, as many as one-fifth of mailed ballots arrive at elections offices after Election Day, leaving them at risk of invalidation in future elections.
- Some changes have already impacted Cascadian voters. In Washington state, for example, officials have had to reject more ballots for tardiness recently than in the past.
- To mitigate extant and potential changes, voters will need to vote earlier or use drop boxes where possible. Election administrators can help with clear instructions.
Voting by mail has a long and proven track record. It increases turnout, gives voters more time to consider issues and candidates, and saves election administrators money. It’s just as free from fraud as other methods of voting—which is to say, there’s virtually none. Neither Democrats nor Republicans get a particular boost from expanding access to mail ballots.
Unsurprisingly, it’s also popular. Across the five states that make up most of Cascadia (Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington), four in five voters receive their ballots in their mailboxes. Cascadia has always been a leader in this form of franchise: Oregon was the first state to hold an all-mail election in 1995 and made it permanent in 2000; Washington followed suit in 2011 after long offering an absentee option.1 Many states across the US expanded the option during the COVID-19 pandemic, and while some have reverted to offering it only to overseas and military voters, close to one-third of American voters still take advantage of the benefits of voting at home.
But this easy method of voting is now under threat. From postal service policy updates to a case before the US Supreme Court, voters long used to dropping their ballots in the mail may no longer have them counted in time. Fortunately, the biggest dangers, such as the US House’s proposed ban on mail-in ballots, don’t seem likely to go into effect any time soon.
In this article, I lay out the existing and potential federal threats to Cascadia’s favorite voting method. I then examine available data and policy on how they might affect our region’s elections.
- Of the five main Cascadian states, Idaho, will have the fewest hurdles to overcome, as its laws already match some of the potential additional restrictions and fewer Idaho voters use the mail-in option. Yet plenty of Gem State voters—rural and urban—still benefit from access to absentee ballots.
- Montana has similar laws to Idaho, but Montana voters return their ballots by mail at the highest rate of any state in the region (most Oregon and Washington voters return ballots through drop boxes), so USPS delays might affect more of them.
- Like voters across the region, Oregon voters would do well to get ballots in early or use the state’s many ballot drop boxes. Oregon’s May primary election was a good messaging test for election administrators and advocates.
- Voters in Washington, which currently allows ballots to arrive at elections offices later than any other state, might have to adjust their habits significantly, depending on the scope of the changes. And recent elections already show a larger proportion of ballots invalidated for tardiness compared with previous years.
- Any changes might have the most impact in Alaska, not for a large number of voters, but for those in remote areas with few fallback options.
Eroding easy voting: The major hurdles
The challenges that might affect mail-in ballots, described below from most to least likely, vary in the scale of their consequences. The most pervasive threat to mail voting isn’t an outright attack; it’s a secondary effect of USPS decisions that are already impacting voters. The US Supreme Court has not yet ruled in the relevant case, but its decision would affect as many as one in six voters in some states and is worth preparing for. More overtly anti-mail voting efforts in the form of congressional legislation and a presidential executive order have greater potential impact but murky prospects for success.
USPS processing and postmark delays
The United States Postal Service (USPS) both delivers unmarked ballots to voters’ homes and returns completed ballots from mailboxes to election centers.2 Its long-standing organizational challenges are already besetting voters.
Facing a financial crisis, USPS started consolidating mail processing centers more than two years ago and reducing delivery and pickup times in early 2025.3 Then in December 2025, USPS declared that postmarks show the date mail goes through an automated processing facility, not necessarily the date USPS receives the mail.4 Together, these shifts have two results: all mail returns are increasingly delayed, and mail might now be postmarked days after it first enters USPS custody. For voters, that might mean days after a voter has dutifully mailed their ballot.
Fourteen states, including Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, rely on the postmark to determine if ballots came in on time: they accept ballots postmarked by Election Day, even if the elections office receives the ballot a few days later.5 Delayed postmarks, therefore, might disqualify ballots, even those dropped in a mailbox before or on Election Day. And delayed mail deliveries will affect the timeliness of all ballots returned through USPS.
SCOTUS might shift ballot deadlines
The US Supreme Court is considering a case that could render postmarking moot. Watson v. RNC questions whether elections offices can accept ballots received after Election Day at all, even if postmarked earlier. The ruling, expected by late June, is likely to prohibit at least some post-Election-Day ballots, according to many court watchers.
If the high court rules that ballots must be received by an elections office by Election Day, the postmark on a ballot won’t matter. But USPS processing changes would still have an impact. In some areas, especially rural communities far from a mail processing facility, a ballot might leave a voter’s mailbox, take days to reach a processing facility, finally get processed, and then take days more to reach a local elections office for counting. By then, it could be too late.
So-far failed attempts: Executive orders, the SAVE Act, and the MEGA Act
Postal and deadline changes will only affect ballots arriving close to Election Day, but the federal government and especially the White House have targeted mail-in voting entirely—despite President Donald Trump’s own use of mail-in voting.6
President Trump issued an executive order at the end of March 2026 that instructs USPS not to deliver ballots to people unless they are on a federally provided voter list (which does not currently exist, since states manage elections).7 Lawyers declared the move patently unconstitutional, and more than 20 state governments immediately challenged the order, including Oregon and Washington, so it’s not likely to go into effect.8 The US Postmaster General, David Steiner, told the New York Times that the postal service would continue to send mail ballots, which it sees as following current law, until the courts say otherwise.9
In addition, Congress has been debating at least two different bills that would affect mail-in voting. The SAVE America Act (an update on an earlier “SAVE Act”), which passed the House in February 2026, would require proof of citizenship when voters register and a photo ID when voting. This policy would be a major change for voters used to registering and voting at home, not to mention the many voters who don’t have documentary proof of citizenship.
The MEGA Act includes similar ID restrictions and would also eliminate universal vote by mail, mandate that ballots are received by Election Day, and require voters to request a mailed ballot for every election.10 Both bills have additional provisions to federalize voter lists and increase penalties for election administrators, which would further strain already overburdened elections offices.
Fortunately, without changes to the Senate filibuster, none of this anti-voter legislation has a chance of passage, and the executive order will likely die in the courts. Still, the actions all add to the chaos and mistrust around elections, which can degrade voter confidence.
What these changes might mean for Cascadia
Data from Cascadian states help elucidate the scale of these real and proposed changes, focusing on those most likely to occur. Voters throughout the region mail in their ballots, including those in both urban and rural areas, so USPS delays will have a widespread impact (as would any federal mail voting ban, although those are unlikely to go into effect).
Washington returns show that the lags are indeed already affecting voters: officials have had to reject more ballots for late postmarks in recent elections than in the past. In addition, one-sixth of Washington ballots and many of Alaska’s absentee ballots currently arrive at elections offices after Election Day, suggesting the need for potentially dramatic shifts in voter habits depending on what happens in the Watson case. (See Sightline’s spreadsheets in the Appendix for full data.)
See Sightline’s fact sheets for Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.
To respond, voters will need to mail their ballots earlier than in previous elections and use drop boxes or other voting return methods when possible. Fortunately, many election administrators in the region are already emphasizing these steps.
New rules could exclude thousands of voters throughout Cascadia who mail in their ballots
Returning ballots by mail (versus dropping them by an elections center or drop box) isn’t problematic per se—mail-in voting is still secure and, for many people, the most accessible form of voting. But places that depend heavily on mail voting might be more at risk for delayed returns and invalidated ballots.
Oregon and Washington, like all universal vote-by-mail states, rely heavily on mail returns, although voters in those states also have the option of returning ballots via a drop box. In the November 2024 general election, 33 percent of Oregon voters returned their ballots by mail; another 60 percent returned them to a ballot drop box; 4 percent brought them to an office; and the remainder sent them via email or fax, or returned them to a different county. Washington saw similar numbers: 33 percent by mail, 67 percent by drop box, and a marginal number by email or fax.11
Plenty of voters in other Cascadian states also mail in their ballots: 14 percent in Alaska, 20 percent in Idaho, and 70 percent of voters in Montana sent their ballots in through the mail in November of 2024.12 Although Alaska has the lowest statewide rate of mail voting in the region, mail is a vital option for far-flung communities in a state where the nearest vote center can be a plane ride away. Plus, because officials tally votes at the state level (rather than locally), ballots sometimes have much farther to travel than in other states, putting Alaskan ballots at much higher risk of delays or missing receipt deadlines.
Compared with general election voters, primary and special election voters tend to cast mail ballots at higher rates; general election voters tend to use drop boxes. In Oregon’s 2024 May primary, for example, 43 percent of voters used mail (up from 33 percent in the general), 54 percent drop boxes, and 3 percent an elections office. In Washington’s August 2024 primary, the proportion was 41 percent mail, 58 percent drop box; see the chart below for Washington state’s drop box usage over time. Those trends indicate that USPS delays might especially affect these lower-turnout, mail-reliant elections.
Changes would impinge on rural and urban alike
Mail-in voting rates also vary within each state. In Washington in November of 2024, more Skagit County voters returned their ballots by mail than in any other county, at 68 percent for all elections. Lincoln, Ferry, Stevens, and Pend Oreille Counties (in order) are home to the next highest proportion of mail-returning voters (see map below). Many of these counties are rural, lightly populated places or have few drop boxes. Analysis from Washington Community Alliance’s Data Hub also indicates that rural and older voters in Washington rely the most on voting by mail.
In contrast, Multnomah County, Oregon, achieved one of the top proportions of mailed ballots in that state: 39 percent in the November 2024 election. Voters in lightly populated Wheeler and Lake Counties, though, returned ballots through the mail in nearly identical proportions. Rural and urban voters all take advantage of mail-in voting.13
In Montana, populous counties also tend to vote predominantly by mail—and so does the rest of the state. Yellowstone County, Montana’s most populous county and home to Billings, topped the list for mail balloting; voters returned 81 percent of their votes by mail in 2024.14 Next came Cascade and Missoula Counties, also among Montana’s most populous. Fourth, though, and with a very similar proportion of voters (76 percent), was 4,200-resident Phillips County. And in 47 of Montana’s 56 counties, more than half of voters returned their ballot in the mail.
Idaho’s urban and rural counties similarly scrambled the rankings. Boise’s Ada County, with close to twice as many residents as the next most populous (Canyon) county, sat right in the middle of mail-ballot usage in 2024, at 22 percent. Some of the state’s most sparsely populated counties—Clark, Camas, Custer—also had a rate of 22 percent. And Adams County, with just 5,000 residents, had the highest 2024 rate of ballots returned by mail (40 percent), indicating the importance of the option for at least some rural communities.
Alaska unfortunately doesn’t report data in the same way as the other regional states, making it much harder to calculate which communities rely most on mail-in ballots. But plenty clearly do. Marvin Parent in the town of Marshall, for example, is 65 nautical air miles from the closest elections office, and with no roads would have to take a plane to get there to cast his ballot.
These numbers don’t show a clear pattern, between or within the states. All kinds of voters—urban and rural, Democrat and Republican and everything in between—have varied reasons for choosing to vote at home, whether due to mobility, illness, busy schedules, travel, or other factors in Americans’ everyday lives. That also means that the electoral and partisan consequences of changed policies disrupting mailed ballots remain unclear.
Delays are already affecting voters: 2026 elections show a higher rate of late rejections
Data from Washington (which shows rejected ballots by reason, unlike other states), indicate that USPS delays have already affected Cascadian mailed ballots.
In most Washington elections, officials reject less than one percent of ballots returned for being late. August primary ballots tend to have higher late rejection rates—an average of 0.96 percent from 2020 to 2025, compared with 0.42 percent for general elections or 0.75 percent overall.
But these numbers are rising. From 2020 to 2025, February special elections averaged a 0.72 percent rejection rate of late-returned ballots. In February 2026, 1.33 percent of ballots were returned late, almost twice the average and amounting to over 10,000 voters (see chart below). Postmark and other mail delays might have hit Washington earlier than February, though: as USPS pointed out, it simply announced its postmark policy in December 2025; it hadn’t necessarily changed it at that date. Plus, other cost-saving policies were already in effect. The data bear evidence for earlier postal changes: rejection rates for the August primary election were also higher than usual, at 1.5 percent of all ballots returned.
Fortunately, ballots returned in November 2025 seem to fit a normal pattern. Voters may have been more aware of the election and more compelled to get in their ballots on time (even-year general elections consistently have the lowest late-ballot rejection rates, perhaps because more voters are paying attention to elections at that time).
Still, the recent statewide increases are worrying. And some counties appear to be hit particularly hard by late ballots. In Yakima, Franklin, Whitman, Chelan, and more than ten other counties, late ballot rejection rates in the 2025 general election were more than twice as high as average rejection rates for the previous four years: from less than one percent to three or almost four percent (see spreadsheet linked in Appendix for full data). In other counties, such as Ferry and Snohomish, the 2025 August primary elections numbers are even more stark, with more than four percent of ballots rejected for being late (up from a baseline close to one percent).
In Yakima, Franklin, Whitman, Chelan, and more than ten other counties, late ballot rejection rates in the 2025 general election were more than twice as high as average rejection rates for the previous four years
The many ballots that arrive after Election Day in states that allow it might not count in future elections
Idaho and Montana already only count ballots received by Election Day, so they likely wouldn’t be too beleaguered by a SCOTUS decision that nationalizes an Election Day receipt deadline (although depending on the scope of the ruling, it may still negatively affect overseas and military voters). But Alaska, Oregon, and Washington currently count ballots postmarked by Election Day even if they arrive later, so voters there would have to adjust.
Oregon extended its receipt deadline from Election Day to seven days afterward as recently as 2022, so an Election Day deadline wouldn’t be too much of a change for most Oregonians, 94 to 99 percent of whom turned their ballots into election offices by the end of Election Day in the last four elections.
If Washington voters had to get their ballots in by Election Day, though, one in every six would have to change their ways. Washington has the longest grace period of any state—21 days—although most post-Election Day ballots arrive the day after polls close. More ballots arrive after Election Day in Washington than in Oregon: from 2019 to 2025, elections offices received an average of 16 percent of ballots after Election Day.15
In Alaska, where the vast scale of the state and variabilities in weather sometimes lead to substantial delays regardless of USPS policies, a similarly high proportion of mailed (absentee) ballots arrive after Election Day: about 20 percent in 2022.16 Ballots from Alaska Native communities are especially vulnerable. The Native American Rights Fund and Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center found that between 55 and 78 percent of absentee ballots from the Aleutian Islands districts up to the North Slope arrived at an election office after Election Day in 2022.
The biggest impacts—and what to do
Of the threats listed, the changes from USPS will have the most widespread impact in Cascadia. Even without any additional receipt timing restrictions, ballots will be postmarked later than in past elections, as we see already in Washington state. That shift will affect the many Oregon and Washington voters who send in their ballots by mail, as well as voters in Alaska without many other options. Ballots will also arrive later at elections offices, impinging on those who choose the absentee option in Idaho and many in Montana, rural and urban alike.
The disruption from SCOTUS’s possible decision in the Watson case would mostly shake up Alaska and Washington, since Idaho and Montana already require elections offices to receive the ballot by Election Day and Oregon only recently shifted away from the same policy. But forcing an earlier receipt deadline would be a much more dramatic blow in those states than USPS’s gradual shifts. In populous Washington, upwards of 400,000 voters whose ballots have arrived after Election Day in the past might have to learn to vote earlier or use a drop box instead. Some of Alaska’s remote communities, where ballots have many miles to travel and multiple logistical hurdles to overcome to reach an office, might find it an impossible hurdle to overcome.
Regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling, voters in all five states will need to mail their ballots earlier than in previous years—at least a week, if not ten days or more, ahead of Election Day. With any less time, voters would do well to prioritize using drop boxes or mail centers where possible to make sure their ballots get counted. For now, voters in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington can also request a manual postmark at a local post office to at least get the ballot marked before Election Day, but that won’t matter if SCOTUS decides ballots must be in by Election Day regardless of postmark.
Election officials can help instruct voters to take these steps, and fortunately many already are. Some are also considering how to add drop boxes, collect ballots directly from post offices, and enact other policies to ensure votes count. Advocates can amplify those messages and reach out directly to voters to encourage early voting and tracking ballots.
Despite the current and potential hurdles, voting by mail remains safe, secure, and an easier way of casting a ballot than taking time off work and standing in line at a polling place. It’s an essential part of Cascadian elections and is poised to stay that way—with some adaptations.
Appendix: Detailed Data
View Washington state ballot returns (through February 2026): Tables by Sightline Institute, compiling data from Washington’s Secretary of State.
View Oregon ballot returns (through November 2024): Tables by Sightline Institute, compiling data from the Oregon Secretary of State.
View Alaska, Idaho and Montana ballot returns and totals for Alaska (for 2024): Tables by Sightline Institute, compiling data from the United States Election Assistance Commission’s Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS).
