Ballots sent to Florida voters found discarded after USPS key stolen, officials say
Blank ballots sent to voters in central Florida were taken from mailboxes and discarded by someone accused of having a stolen U.S. Postal Service master key, Florida officials said.
Orange County Supervisor of Elections Glen Gilzean said his office issued new ballots right away.
“Recently our office was made aware by Orange County voters and the United States Postal Service that a stolen USPS Arrow Key was used to access cluster mailboxes in the county,” Gilzean said in a statement. “During the theft, several vote-by-mail ballots our office mailed days earlier to voters were discarded on the ground.”
Chief Elections Administrator Christopher Heath told McClatchy News that some voters reached out to the office after the Postal Service notified them that their mail was compromised because a fraudulently obtained universal arrow key had been used to access boxes in their neighborhood.
About a dozen discarded ballots were found near a storm drain, but Heath said based on the timeline of when the ballots were sent out, they were blank. He said the target of the mail theft likely wasn’t ballots specifically but rather financial information or something of monetary value.
“The people breaking into these cluster mailboxes do not care about ballots,” Heath said. “They don’t want ballots, but mailboxes have ballots in them.”
USPS is investigating the incident in the Orlando area, Heath said.
McClatchy News reach out to USPS for comment Oct. 23 and did not immediately receive a response.
The agency told WOFL it couldn’t confirm or deny details of any ongoing investigation.
“Utilizing proven mail-fraud detection and loss prevention strategies and countermeasures, Postal Inspectors will continue to actively identify attempts to compromise the mail system our Nation is depending on during this critical time,” USPS said in a statement to the outlet.
The Supervisor of Elections Office is encouraging voters to sign up for BallotTrax, which allows voters to check on the status of their mail-in ballots. Anyone concerned about their ballot should reach out to the Orange County Supervisor of Elections Office.
Voters can find more information about vote-by-mail in Orange County here.
Gilzean shared that a record 18,150 people cast their ballots in Orange County on Oct. 21, the first day of early voting.
Orange County includes the Orlando metropolitan area.
This story was originally published October 23, 2024 at 4:59 PM with the headline "Ballots sent to Florida voters found discarded after USPS key stolen, officials say."