{"id":411281,"date":"2026-07-24T22:07:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T22:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/411281\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T22:07:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T22:07:12","slug":"thousands-of-california-primary-mail-in-ballots-rejected-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/411281\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands of California primary mail-in ballots rejected. Here’s why"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 148,000 California mail-in ballots were rejected during the June primary, according to new state election data <\/a>\u2014 and nearly two-thirds were disqualified for the same reason.<\/p>\n

The most common problem wasn’t voter fraud or paperwork errors. It was ballots arriving too late to be counted. Signature issues were the second-leading cause, and together the two problems accounted for more than 9 out of every 10 rejected ballots statewide.<\/p>\n

As California prepares for the Nov. 3 general election, here’s what the data reveals about why ballots were rejected, which counties had the highest rejection rates and what voters can do to avoid having their ballots tossed this fall.<\/p>\n

Main reasons\u00a0June primary mail-in\u00a0ballots were rejected\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most common reason vote-by-mail ballots were rejected was that they were received too late, accounting for 93,479 of the 148,241 rejected ballots.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Ballots rejected due to lateness are caused primarily<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0being postmarked too late to count, not because they arrived too late to count,”\u00a0Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation,\u00a0wrote in an email to the Associated Press.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

For a mail-in ballot to be counted, it must be\u00a0postmarked on or before Election Day<\/a>\u00a0and received by county election officials within seven days after an election. State officials recommend\u00a0mailing ballots at least five days before an election. If mailing on Election Day, officials\u00a0advise\u00a0getting a hand-stamped postmark from a postal worker inside a United States Post Office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The second-most common reason\u00a0mail-in ballots were\u00a0rejected\u00a0was a non-matching\u00a0signature\u00a0(43,977 ballots).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

With each ballot, election officials verify that the\u00a0signature\u00a0on a\u00a0voter’s\u00a0registration card matches the\u00a0signature\u00a0on the ballot.\u00a0Should election officials find a\u00a0signature\u00a0missing or not matching, a voter will be notified and given a deadline to fix the\u00a0signature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Together, the\u00a0top two\u00a0issues accounted for more than 92% of all rejected vote-by-mail ballots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here’s\u00a0a full breakdown of reasons underlying rejected ballots based on California Secretary of State data:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ballot received too late:\u00a093,479 ballots (63.1% of all rejections)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Non-matching\u00a0signature: 43,977 (29.7%)\u00a0<\/p>\n

No voter\u00a0signature: 8,313 (5.6%)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Voter already voted: 743 (0.5%)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ballot\u00a0missing\u00a0from envelope: 640 (0.4%)\u00a0<\/p>\n

No ID provided: 581 (0.4%)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Multiple ballots in one envelope: 451 (0.3%)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other reasons: 33 ballots\u00a0<\/p>\n

Counties\u00a0with\u00a0the greatest\/least\u00a0mail-in\u00a0ballot rejections\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tulare County had the highest\u00a0rate\u00a0(3.52%)\u00a0of rejected vote-by-mail ballots, with 2,319 rejected out of 65,926 returned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other counties with higher\u00a0percentages\u00a0of\u00a0rejected\u00a0mail-in ballots include:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alpine County: 3.36%\u00a0(17\u00a0of 506 returned)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Merced County: 3.36%\u00a0(1,504 of 44,772 returned)\u00a0<\/p>\n

San Luis Obispo County: 3.34%\u00a0(3,319 of 99,344 returned)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stanislaus County: 3.07%\u00a0(3,063 of 99,859 returned)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Amador County had the lowest mail-in ballot rejection rate (0.82%), with\u00a0127 rejected out of 15,427 returned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Additional\u00a0counties with lower ballot rejection rates\u00a0include:\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Placer County: 0.93% (1,168 of 125,996 returned)\u00a0<\/p>\n

El Dorado County: 1.16% (841 of 72,809 returned)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sacramento County: 1.17% (4,534 of 388,970 returned)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lassen County: 1.18%\u00a0(87 of 7,352 returned)\u00a0<\/p>\n

How does June’s primary ballot rejection rate compare to 2022\u00a0<\/p>\n

About 6.66 million mail-in ballots<\/a> were returned in California’s June 2022 primary, according to state data.<\/p>\n

Of those ballots, 105,818 were rejected, a rejection rate of about 1.59%. That’s roughly 42,000 fewer rejected ballots than in the June 2026 primary, which had higher voter turnout.<\/p>\n

The most common reason ballots were rejected in the June 2022 primary was that they arrived too late, followed by signature mismatches.<\/p>\n

When is California’s general election?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

California’s general election<\/a> will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 3.<\/p>\n

The last day to register to vote for\u00a0California’s general election is Oct. 19, according to state officials. Counties\u00a0will begin mailing ballots\u00a0to\u00a0registered\u00a0voters\u00a0no later than Oct. 5.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Thousands of California primary mail-in ballots rejected. Here’s why<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 148,000 California mail-in ballots were rejected during the June primary, according to new state election data…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,100221,73547,164353,164375],"class_list":["post-411281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-election-officials","tag-primary","tag-rejected-ballots","tag-rejection-rate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}