More than 300 mail ballots bound for Utah voters ended up in a dumpster in a church parking lot, and the man accused of putting them there was a letter carrier who had been on shift for barely an hour.
The Justice Department announced the case on Tuesday. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said Damon Matai Seei, 34, of Payson, was arrested that day and arraigned in federal court in Salt Lake City. Seei pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of destruction or delay of mail. If convicted, he faces up to five years in federal prison. A grand jury indicted him on 16 September, and his next court date is 30 November.
What prosecutors say happened
Seei was working a route in Eagle Mountain, a conservative suburb of Provo, according to McCotter. U.S. Attorney Melissa Holyoak told reporters he took the ballots and set them aside within 90 minutes of starting work, and “did not deliver a single one.” The ballots were meant for the state’s June primary.
Asked about motive, Holyoak said Seei told authorities he had no political agenda and did not mean to throw the ballots away. Court documents say he admitted in an interview that he discarded the mail to “lighten his workload,” presumably so he could finish early. Prosecutors argued it was implausible that he did not know the ballots were in the pile, since he had set them aside himself.
It was a county official, not the Postal Service, who first noticed. Several Eagle Mountain residents told Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson they had never received ballots. He found turnout in the community unusually low, and his outreach showed that hundreds of voters had gone without. Seei no longer works for the Postal Service.
The wider argument over mail voting
Utah automatically mails ballots to every active registered voter, though a new state law will end that in 2029 and require people to opt in. Most Utah voters return ballots by mail or drop box. Nationwide, nearly a third of voters use mail ballots.
“Election integrity, which includes ballot integrity, by the way, should be a nonpartisan issue,” McCotter said. Holyoak said that by throwing away the mail, the defendant also “threw away the chance for those citizens to exercise their right to vote.” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, said the state’s system has “tremendous security measures in place, and we’re adding more all of the time.”
The case comes as President Donald Trump presses for tighter limits on mail voting, alleging fraud, though officials have not produced evidence of widespread fraud. Earlier this month the Supreme Court rejected his attempt to impose new Postal Service rules ahead of the midterms. The investigation, run by the Postal Service inspector general and Homeland Security Investigations, is continuing.
Sources
- US Justice Department charges Utah postal worker with dumping mail ballots in trash during primary | The Associated Press
- DOJ charges Utah postal worker for allegedly dumping mail ballots in trash during state primary
- Former Postal Worker Indicted After Allegedly Disposing of Hundreds of Mail-In Ballots in Utah
