WASHINGTON — An overwhelmed U.S. postal worker in Utah threw 300 mail-in ballots into a parking lot dumpster shortly before the state’s June 23 primary election in which both Democrats and Republicans were on the ballot, Justice Department officials said Tuesday.
The 34-year-old mail carrier told investigators that he did not have a political agenda and that he tossed other mail when he ditched the ballots, Melissa Holyoak, U.S. attorney for the District of Utah, said. She said roughly 95% of voters do so by mail in the state, and it wasn’t clear yet whether they were able to eventually cast ballots.
According to a government memo, Damon Matai Seei told investigators that he wanted to toss out advertisements to “lighten his workload” after feeling overwhelmed.
“He claims he simply made a ‘poor decision’ out of ‘frustration’ and ‘laziness,’” the memo said. He didn’t intend to toss any ballots, they said. Seei is no longer with the U.S. Postal Service. He pleaded not guilty Tuesday to a charge of destruction and delay of mail.
The U.S. Postal Service said in a statement that it works “tirelessly to ensure public trust in the mail and monitors to prevent any issues that may arise” and that it closely monitors political and election mail.
The agency said it was notified of a mail dumping and referred the matter to the inspector general, “specifically charged with investigating alleged crimes” by postal service employees.
“The unique status of political and election mail makes its security a top priority during every election cycle,” according to the statement, which said the Postal Service works to “to prevent, identify and resolve any issues that might interfere with its secure and timely delivery.”
Justice Department officials held a news conference in Washington to announce the charge as part of its efforts to promote “election integrity.” Federal prosecutors have made possible voter fraud — which is rare — a priority, as President Donald Trump insists without evidence that noncitizens are voting en masse and has sought to limit mail-in ballots. The Supreme Court last week refused to allow the president’s mail-in restrictions to be enforced.
Trump has repeatedly made false claims that he won the 2020 election and has falsely claimed he won the popular vote in 2016, yet the Trump administration has struggled during both terms to bring cases showing evidence of significant voter fraud. That’s despite a massive effort in Trump’s second term to obtain voter registration records from states in an attempt to determine if there were any noncitizens registered.
So far during the president’s second term, the Justice Department has charged 70 voter-fraud-related cases, officials said Tuesday. More than 170 million people are registered to vote in the U.S.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said there were more cases in the works, but he didn’t provide further details or a timeline.
“Under the leadership of President Trump and Attorney General Blanche, this department is committed to protecting the vote of American citizens,” he said.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, meanwhile, is revving up a long-standing election monitoring program but putting a new emphasis on “ballot security” and staffing the effort with newly hired conservative personnel who have replaced longtime career employees, hundreds of whom have departed en masse since Trump returned to office. The Civil Rights Division’s efforts to seize voter rolls have resulted in a string of court losses — with 25 courts ruling against the federal government.
Voting rights experts say isolated instances of fraud do happen, as do issues with voting machines, but not on a scale that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, which was won by Democrat Joe Biden.
But the materials that the Justice Department releases could help feed Trump’s broader narrative about elections. And with the majority of voters disapproving of Trump’s presidency and saying his policies have hurt the economy, Republicans are facing a tough midterms picture.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department rolled out five voting-related cases, four of which were brought against noncitizens. Last week, the Justice Department announced that 16 individuals had been charged in election-related cases, with a news release mentioning that at least 10 of them were lawful permanent residents of the United States. The defendants were originally from Mexico, Nigeria, India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Antigua and Barbuda, Venezuela, and Colombia.
There was also a defendant from Russia: Victoria Aquilina, a 42-year-old Russian national who entered the United States as an au pair in her early 20s, was charged with casting a ballot in the 2024 election.
Trump — who, until he won the 2024 election, faced federal criminal charges over his efforts to overturn his 2020 loss in the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — said earlier this year that Republicans should “nationalize the voting.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have launched an “unprecedented” effort to combat potential disruption of the 2026 midterm elections.
Seei’s next court date is Nov. 30. His federal public defender did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
