Junior Grace Munn thought she was picking up her South Carolina ballot when she visited the GW Mail and Package Services center last month, but when a mailroom employee handed her a Massachusetts ballot instead, she knew there had been a mistake and immediately handed it back.
“It’s just a little scary because someone out there could be using my ballot, and I would have no idea,” Munn said.
The mix-up would be the first of three hurdles she’d face in accessing her ballot to vote in her first presidential election, a historically narrow race for the top of the ticket. On her second attempt, she said the package center didn’t notify her that her ballot arrived. She then requested her ballot for a third time, asking her county election board to send her ballot to a friend’s off-campus apartment.
“I had to order it three different times, so they never got it,” Munn said. “But I finally ordered it to one of my friends’ apartments, and I got it through that.”
Munn is one of a dozen students who said the package center has lost or delayed their ballots this year, causing them to pivot their voting plans for an election where the presidency, 34 Senate seats, all 435 House seats and thousands of local positions are on the line. But officials say they’ve implemented several policies this election cycle like processing updates and mailbox renovations to expedite the delivery of absentee ballots ahead of Tuesday’s general election.
University spokesperson Julia Metjian said GW Mail and Package Services employees began sorting absentee ballots separately from other mail and sent election-specific “Ballot Pickup” emails to students when their ballots arrived, a move that followed students’ reports in 2022 of broken campus mailboxes, lost ballots and package center processing delays that prevented them from accessing their ballots in time to vote in the midterm elections.
“The Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service and Mail and Package Services have been collaborating closely to develop a plan that prioritizes student ballots, ensuring they are delivered on time,” Metjian said in an email, referring to the center that houses GW Votes, a “nonpartisan coalition” of GW community members that promotes voter registration and participation among students.
GW Mail and Package Services in July switched providers from PacTrac to QTrak, after announcing a campus-wide transition from lock and key mailboxes to self-service electronic mail lockers in residence halls in March 2023 to account for an influx of package deliveries and a decline in students receiving postal mail.
Joanne Tillery, a staff member at the Mount Vernon Campus mail room, said mail room workers identify and separate ballots from other mail first and prioritize sending students ballot pickup notification emails, which instruct students to collect their ballots as soon as possible.
“I’ll separate the mail, take the flyers that we don’t need, et cetera, et cetera, but I always take the ballots and everything,” Tillery said. “Anything that has election on it I put it in a separate pile.”
Junior Reianna DeLapara, a biomedical engineering student from Massachusetts, said she requested her ballot through her state on Oct. 7 and again on Oct. 16 but hadn’t received a ballot as of Nov. 3. She said that both times, state officials forwarded her proof of ballot delivery to the package center, but a mail room operations manager told her they never received it and attributed the alleged ballot nondelivery to mail couriers.
“Sometimes they might say something is a rule that is going on, or one person might tell you one thing and then somebody’s telling you something else, or a lot of times they’re blaming the couriers,” DeLapara said.
She said she’d previously faced months of mail room inconsistencies while living on campus, like not receiving mail and packages, delayed packages and mail room staff claiming that items were never delivered despite courier delivery confirmations.
“We did not have lost packages the way we have them since we switched over to a new carrier,” DeLapara said.
Junior Malaika Mbullu, a political science and English student from Maryland, said she planned to vote by mail but never received her ballot from the package center, so she traveled back home to Maryland to vote in person. She said her state’s board of elections told her that her ballot was delivered, so she assumed she received it when she got word from the package center to collect mail.
But she said when she arrived, a package center employee said they didn’t have it and attributed the issue to the postal service. She said it was inconvenient to pay for travel to vote at home in this election, in which a Maryland senate seat is up for grabs and could determine control of the chamber.
Mbullu added that since GW switched mail contractors in July, she has noticed worsening delays and misplaced packages, compared to the two years prior when she never faced such issues.
“This isn’t the first time that mail has been lost,” Mbullu said. “There’s even been times where I’ve gotten packages months after they’ve been here.”
Cameron Johnson, a junior studying criminal justice and psychology from Rhode Island, said she requested her ballot on Oct. 7 and followed up with her state’s canvassers multiple times but still hasn’t received it as of Nov. 3. She said state canvassers told her that her ballot was delivered but later said her ballot must have been “lost in the mail.”
She said she ordered another mail-in ballot to her home in Rhode Island and her mom paid $70 to overnight it on Nov. 2 because she wanted to vote, but the package center is closed on Sundays, so she couldn’t ask if they had the ballot.
“I tried to call the mail room today, and I was sent straight to voicemail,” Johnson said. “I have not gotten a chance to get a hold of the mail room people.”
Jack Martin, a senior from New Hampshire majoring in political science, said he requested his ballot around Aug. 10 for his state’s Sept. 10 primary. He said his state notified him that his ballot was delivered in late August, but the package center did not notify him of his ballot’s delivery until the day of the primary election, after the state’s 5 p.m. voting deadline.
“I was not able to vote because it was just processing for so long,” Martin said.
