Ballots dated before the Nov. 7 general election return deadline sat uncounted in one Seattle mail drop box until voters complained to King County.
Now, a week after the deadline, at least 85 ballots are being added to the count as some Seattle City Council candidates sit within a few hundred votes of their opponents.
Voters who dropped off ballots at a mailbox on 15th Avenue East and East John Street became concerned when their ballots were not counted when they checked the King County Elections ballot tracker. After voters raised the issue with the county, they were told that an outbound mailbox had not been cleared since mid-October.
“After learning of this, we immediately reached to USPS to look into what happened,” Halei Watkins, communications director for King County Elections, wrote in an email Tuesday.