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Elections officials around California rejected 122,480 vote-by-mail ballots cast during the November general election, or 0.9% of all mail-in ballots, according to data from the Secretary of State’s office.
The vast majority of those arrived late, had mismatched voter signatures or no signature at all.
Elections officials are supposed to notify a voter if their mail-in ballot has a signature issue and provide an opportunity to “cure,” or fix it. But they’re not always successful, leaving those ballots uncounted. They are kept for 22 months, as are all ballots cast.
An analysis of mail ballot rejections during the 2024 election by USC’s Center for Inclusive Democracy found that 59% had a non-matching voter signature, 27% were mailed or arrived after the deadline, and 11% had no signature. The other 3% were dismissed for other unspecified reasons.
Young voters most likely to have ballots rejected Voters between the ages of 18 and 24 were more likely to have their ballot rejected, most commonly for a mismatched signature. More than 3% percent of all mail ballots cast by this group were ultimately rejected during the 2024 presidential election.
There are a few reasons for this, experts told the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee during a Tuesday hearing on ballot rejections.
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Kim Alexander, president of the nonprofit California Voter Foundation, raised concerns about how a first-time voter would react having a ballot rejected.
“People don’t like to do things they feel they’re not good at,” she said. “If people are voting for the first time and have gone through all that process and then are being told ‘you didn’t get it right,’ are they going to come back? I don’t know. I worry about that.”
While 0.9% of all mail ballots seems like a low number, elections experts point out that some races are decided by a small handful of votes.
Voting advocates also raised concerns that signature verification rules are not being applied equally across all counties.
According to a California Voter Foundation analysis, Imperial County had the highest rejection rate during the 2024 election, with 2.5% of ballots rejected. The lowest rejection rate was in Amador County, which disallowed 0.17%, or just 34 ballots.
“We need to make sure these regulations are being consistently followed in all 58 counties,” Alexander said. (Full Story)