Recorder: two stolen‑mail incidents recovered; three sealed ballots found and counted

Recorder Justin Heap told the board he was aware of two incidents involving stolen mail during the election window. He said an earlier case involved three outgoing affidavit envelopes that were recovered early enough to void and reissue ballots to affected voters.

Heap described a second incident where law‑enforcement recovered a suspect at a U.S. Postal Service drop box and, in the suspect’s vehicle, found three sealed green envelopes that had been voted and mailed. Heap said election staff and the inspector general examined those envelopes; because the ballots were sealed and showed no signs of tampering they were processed through signature verification and counted. "None of them appeared to be tampered with," Heap said, and the ballots were accepted.

Heap told the board he will continue working with the post office and the inspector general on these investigations and emphasized that, in these cases, the county was able to preserve voter ballots and verify signatures so that no voters were disenfranchised.