WSJ:

The Washington, D.C., Board of Elections, inundated with complaints from voters who said they didn’t receive absentee ballots in the mail, created an unusual workaround for Tuesday’s primary: allowing voters to submit ballots by email.

That conflicts with security recommendations typically given by experts, but one local official said she thought it was worth the risk given the unusual circumstances. “I guess there are Russian hackers that can do anything, but I doubt they’re really concerned with the Ward 2 D.C. election,” said Councilmember Elissa Silverman.

Washington, D.C., and seven states holding presidential primaries on Tuesday had promoted voting by mail because of concerns about in-person voting during the coronavirus pandemic. Ms. Silverman, who wasn’t on the ballot, said hundreds of voters asked her office for help after they didn’t receive absentee ballots they requested, and she called for an investigation into what happened.

Rachel Coll, a spokeswoman for the elections board, said late Tuesday that it wasn’t clear why some absentee ballots weren’t received and how many voters were affected. She called the decision to allow ballots to be submitted over email a “last resort” available to those who tried unsuccessfully to get absentee ballots.

The elections board said Wednesday that it had received and counted approximately 50,000 absentee ballots, out of around 91,000 that district voters had requested. The board said it would count absentee ballots through June 12 as long as they were postmarked by June 2. In-person voters totaled 33,194, including the early voting period and on Election Day.