Nearly 150,000 California voters had their mail-in ballots rejected for the state’s June primary, a significant increase from recent elections. This spike in rejections comes as the state attempts to make voting easier and boost participation.

Causes of Rejection

According to data compiled by the secretary of state’s office, the primary driver of the higher rejection numbers is late-arriving ballots. Voting experts suspect that postmarks on ballots that came after Election Day are the main cause, making them ineligible to be counted.

Lateness accounted for 93,479 rejected ballots in June, the largest category for disqualifying a ballot. This number is up from about 70,000 in the 2022 primary and about 76,000 in the 2024 primary.

Concerns Over Postal Service Changes

Lawmakers are concerned about changes to the U.S. Postal Service’s postmarking procedures, which might affect the timing of when postmarks are applied. A group of mostly Democratic U.S. senators sent a letter to the U.S. Postal Service, alarmed that mail-processing changes might affect postmark dates for mail-in ballots.

California election officials had urged voters to send their mail ballots early, warning that Postal Service changes could lead to slower mail service.

Rejection Rates by County

The highest mail ballot rejection rate in June was in Tulare County, with a rate of 3.52%. Alpine County and Merced County followed, with rejection rates of 3.36%.

Nearly 44,000 ballots were set aside because the voter’s signature didn’t match the one on record with county officials. Over 8,300 ballots were rejected because there was no signature on the returned ballot envelope.

Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.