Saratoga, CA — Election officials across California set aside close to 150,000 vote-by-mail ballots during the June 2 primary, a jump of tens of thousands over recent contests, a tally from the state's secretary of state shows.
The discarded ballots represented 1.7 percent of all mail votes cast, the state's steepest rejection rate in a decade, the California Voter Foundation said. Of the 148,241 ballots that went uncounted, 93,497 were set aside for arriving after the deadline.
Another 52,290 were rejected because voters either did not sign the return envelope or their signature did not match the one on file. Under the state's "curing" process, county registrars may contact those voters and give them weeks to correct the problem after the election.
Officials and voting advocates tied the late ballots partly to changes in Postal Service operations that can delay when a postmark is applied, along with an unusually competitive race for governor that kept many voters undecided.