100K Mail-in Ballots Rejected In California Primary Elections Over Mistakes

California election officials rejected more than 100,000 mail-in ballots during the March presidential primary, highlighting an alarming gap in the state’s efforts to make every vote count.

The Associated Press obtained data from the California Secretary of State that showed 102,428 mail-in ballots were disqualified in the state primaries.

California’s mail-in election during the coronavirus pandemic is part of an increasing trend among states to increase mail-in balloting to avoid gathering large crowds at polling places.

Many have questioned the integrity of vote-by-mail elections, including President Donald Trump.

In May, Trump railed on Twitter that mail-in ballots would be “fraudulent” and claimed that the California primaries would be a “rigged election” as California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law that required county election officials to mail a ballot to almost all of the 21 million registered voters for the November election.

Twitter added a label to Trump’s tweets about California’s vote-by-mail plans, saying that his tweets “could confuse voters.”

Supporters of vote-by-mail elections say the system could offer better flexibility to voters while being just as reliable but voters at home do not have assistance from polling workers, so problems were expected.

Most of the rejected mail ballots in the California presidential primary were mailed or arrived past the state-mandated deadlines. Ballots should have been mailed by Election Day and received within three days after. More than 70,000 of the ballots missed that deadline.

Another 27,525 ballots didn’t have signatures or had signatures that did not match voter records. Although the state has a mechanism to correct that error, most of the voters could not be found to sign their ballots.

Some 800 ballot envelopes were submitted without the ballots inside, and state authorities think voters simply forgot.

California has offered mail-in ballots to people who requested them. Mail-in ballots have grown over time to represent more than half of all ballots cast in the state.

Some states like Washington have elections purely by mail while others like Arizona have a large number of votes cast by mail.

Approximately 1.5% of the 7 million total mail-in ballots returned in this primary were rejected. In contrast, only 1% of ballots were rejected in state-wide elections in 2018.