Thousands of New Jersey primary ballots bypassed Cherry Hill's Bellmawr mail facility and sat in Memphis, Tennessee, for nearly a week in April. A tracking-label error at the Trenton Processing and Distribution Center broke the routing chain, according to a USPS Office of Inspector General audit released Sept. 4.
The mistake started April 22. Staff at the Trenton center received pallets of primary election ballots from a Board of Elections office and moved them into different containers to save trailer space. They did not transfer the tracking labels.
Without those labels, the containers were dispatched toward the South Jersey Processing and Distribution Center in Bellmawr but were never unloaded. The trailer continued on its scheduled route and arrived in Memphis the following day.
No intake record of the ballots existed at the Memphis facility.
Postal officials said the ballots returned to New Jersey by April 29 and were correctly mailed April 30, The Sun Papers reported. The ballots arrived in time for the June primary. A USPS spokesperson told NJ.com the agency was still determining the total number of ballots involved.
Audit flags gaps beyond Memphis detour
The Memphis incident was one finding in a broader review of how USPS handled election mail from February through May 2026. Inspectors visited nine processing facilities and 73 delivery units across eight states. In June, investigators returned to five facilities in New Jersey and Tennessee after a congressional inquiry.
USPS processed roughly 37 million pieces of ballot mail during the period, with on-time processing scores between 97.75% and 98.99%. But auditors found election-related training materials missing at 22 of 73 delivery units, about 30%.
At 32 of 82 facilities, roughly 39%, management did not know the established procedures for reporting late-arriving political mail. Five ballots were not recovered in time to reach Boards of Elections before primary deadlines.
The inspector general made 11 recommendations. USPS management agreed with 10 and disagreed with one: a recommendation to promptly notify customers affected by new regional transportation plans.
In its formal response, the Postal Service called the New Jersey-to-Tennessee incident isolated and said overall ballot mail performance remained strong, as ProPublica reported.
David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a former Justice Department civil rights lawyer, told ProPublica the audit confirms USPS has "a long way to go to meet its core obligations of delivering election mail in a timely manner."
Supreme Court case and November options
The audit lands as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs whether to let USPS implement new mail-voting rules tied to an executive order President Donald Trump signed March 31. On Thursday, Sept. 10, a three-judge panel of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a block on the order, refusing to lift a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani.
The Trump administration has filed a third emergency appeal with the Supreme Court. A decision could come as early as the week of Sept. 14, according to SCOTUSblog. The American Postal Workers Union filed a brief Sept. 9 arguing the new rules pose a "significant risk of wide swaths of Americans not being able to vote by mail."
For Cherry Hill voters who plan to vote by mail in the Nov. 3 general election, Camden County offers 29 secure, monitored drop box locations as an alternative to relying on USPS delivery. Under New Jersey law, a mail-in ballot must be received by the Camden County Board of Election before polls close on Election Day or be postmarked by Election Day and received within six days. Early voting runs Oct. 24 through Nov. 1.
The Camden County Board of Election can be reached at (856) 401-VOTE.
