Young voters in California are more likely than older voters to have their vote-by-mail ballots rejected, a September study found.

The study, which was published by the California Voter Foundation, examined trends in rejected ballots across the state. Over the last decade, election officials rejected 1.7% of vote-by-mail ballots cast in statewide elections, according to the study. However, voters between the ages of 18 and 24 had their vote-by-mail ballots rejected at about three times the rate of older voters in the three counties studied, said Kim Alexander, president and founder of the California Voter Foundation.

Young voters have several factors working against them, said Alexander, who was a co-author on the study. When it comes to casting vote-by-mail ballots, young voters are more likely to be new to voting, unaccustomed to making signatures and unfamiliar with using the United States Postal Service, she added.

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In the dramatic midterm elections of 2018, when the fate of the House and Senate hung in the balance and a new governor was about to be enthroned, two of every three votes tallied in California were cast via mail-in ballots rather than by in-person voting —even in the absence of a deadly pandemic.

By-mail voting has long played a dominant role in Golden State democracy, so the ballot-in-every-mailbox experiment currently underway is not so much revolution as evolution. But understanding the particulars of what happened to mail ballots in California’s 2018 election — how many were sent to voters, how many were never returned, how many were rejected and why? — can help prepare for an unprecedented Nov. 3, when counting commences on what may well be the weirdest Election Day in American history.

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After $300-million and 11 years, the nation's largest county rolled out the first publicly-owned voting system earlier this year, promising "transparency, accessibility, usability, and security."

Los Angeles County's new voting system — dubbed "Voting Solutions for All People," or VSAP — has raised concerns from election security experts. Dozens of advocacy groups have warned California's top election official that the electronic touchscreen system used for in-person voting relies on QR codes to tabulate votes. QR codes are vulnerable to hackers and system malfunctions and cannot be easily verified by most voters, U.S. government and outside experts have found.

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Nervous voters in California are walking their mail-in ballots into elections departments so they can personally hand them to an election official.

They want to be 100 percent certain their ballot gets counted.

“It feels like every voter I talk to is on edge thinking for some reason their ballot might not count,” said Melinda Dubroff, registrar of voters in San Joaquin County.

Every qualified ballot will be counted and there’s really no need to worry once a ballot is mailed or placed in an official drop box, elections officials say. The state’s safety protocol for drop boxes is rigorous.

But voters have reason for anxiety.