Staggering number of ballots rejected in California primary as slow pace cripples count

California’s promise of easier voting is showing its faults after nearly 150,000 mail-in ballots were rejected in June — the highest number in recent statewide primaries.

The Golden State has spent years expanding access to the ballot box, sending every registered voter a mail-in ballot and allowing ballots to arrive up to seven days after Election Day — as long as the envelope is postmarked on time.

But even with that extended deadline, late ballots were by far the biggest reason votes were thrown out, according to data from the California secretary of state’s office the AP reported.

A total of 148,241 mail ballots were rejected in June, representing 1.73% of all mail ballots cast. That’s up from 108,982 rejected ballots in the 2024 primary and 105,818 in 2022.

The biggest culprit: timing.

More than 93,000 ballots were rejected because they arrived too late, compared with roughly 70,000 in 2022 and about 76,000 in 2024.

Voting experts say the problem may not be when ballots arrive at election offices, but when they are postmarked by the US Postal Service — a process that has changed as the agency consolidates operations and routes mail through larger processing centers.

“Ballots rejected due to lateness are caused primarily to being postmarked too late to count, not because they arrived too late to count,” Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, wrote in an email.

Alexander said the spike deserves scrutiny, especially after many voters waited until the final days to decide in a chaotic and wide-open governor’s race.

Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy, said the increase in late ballot rejections raises questions about what is driving the change.

Rejection rates have fluctuated over time, but the growing number of ballots rejected for lateness “does really demand the question why this is happening,” Romero said.

Concerns over postal delays have already reached Washington.

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals last week temporarily allowed USPS to move forward with a proposed election-mail rule requiring states to provide voter lists and serialized ballot barcodes before federal ballots are mailed — a move supporters say will strengthen election safeguards.

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The rejection problem varied widely by county. Tulare County had the highest rejection rate at 3.52%, followed by Alpine and Merced counties, both at 3.36%.

Nearly 44,000 ballots were rejected because voter signatures did not match records on file, while more than 8,300 were tossed because voters failed to sign the return envelope.

Other rejected ballots included cases where voters had already cast another ballot, ballots were missing from envelopes or multiple ballots were returned together.

The data did not reveal how many rejected ballots came from Democrats, Republicans or independent voters.

California’s lengthy vote-counting process has long drawn criticism, with results often taking weeks to finalize. The state’s mail-heavy system stands in contrast to states such as Florida and Texas, where election results are typically counted much faster.

After the primary, President Donald Trump renewed his criticism of California’s election system, while the Justice Department opened an investigation into Los Angeles County elections.

There is no evidence of widespread fraud in mail voting but investigating voter fraud in California has been a priority for the Trump administration.

Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor challenged Gov. Gavin Newsom to show proof that California isn’t experiencing voter fraud.

After Newsom called President Trump’s claim of widespread voter fraud “false and misleading” ahead of the commander-in-chief’s primetime speech on election fraud, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli shot back at the governor.

“Prove it,” Essayli wrote on X. “Open your voter rolls and let us conduct the audit…What is there to hide?”