Nearly 150,000 California voters Your mail-in ballots were rejected For the state’s June primary, that’s an increase over recent elections, even as the state tries to make voting easier with the goal of increasing voter turnout and getting every ballot counted.
California is notorious for this Cumbersomely slow vote counting That can drag on for weeks and sometimes longer, and is largely the result of several changes over the years that were intended to increase voter turnout but have done so little done to achieve that. The changes include: Every voter will receive a mail-in ballot that can arrive at the election office seven days late and still be counted as long as the envelope is postmarked by Election Day.
But despite this generous one-week window, late ballots are the main reason for the higher rejection numbers, according to the State Department. Election experts suspect the main problem is that ballots received after Election Day are postmarked, making them ineligible for counting. This could be due to changes in the US Postal Service that could affect the timing of postmarks.
Ballots arriving late resulted in rejections
According to the state 148,241 mail-in ballots were rejected in the June election, or a rate of 1.73% of all mail-in ballots.
In raw numbers, that’s an increase over the 2024 primary, when 108,982 mail-in ballots were rejected, a rate of 1.56%. In 2022, 105,818 mail-in ballots were invalidated during the primary, a similar rate to 2024.
Delay accounted for 93,479 rejected ballots in June, by far the largest category for invalidating a ballot. That was up from about 70,000 in the 2022 primary and about 76,000 in the 2024 primary, although voter turnout in those elections was lower compared to last June.
Kim Alexander, President of the Bipartisanship California Voter Foundation, said the increase in rejected ballots due to lateness is a major problem that — in addition to postal procedures — could also be related to a late surge in ballots in June. Many voters waited until the final days to make a decision in a wildly open and chaotic race for governor.
“Ballots rejected for lateness are primarily because they were postmarked too late to be counted, rather than because they arrived too late to be counted,” Alexander wrote in an email.
Rejection rates fluctuated over timeBut the growing number of those deferred because of lateness compared to recent elections “really raises the question of why this is happening,” said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy, a nonpartisan research group.
Lawmakers are concerned about this USPS Postmark changes
A group of mostly Democratic U.S. senators met in January sent a letter for the US Postal Serviceconcerned that changes in mail processing could affect the postmark date Mail-in ballots during an election year That will determine control of Congress.
The agency’s updated guidelines say postmarks may not indicate the first day the postal service received the mail, but rather the day it was processed at one of its processing centers. Due to recent consolidations within the Postal Service, these centers are more likely to be located further from certain communities, which could result in further postmark delays.
On Thursday, two Wisconsin Democrats, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Gov. Tony Evers, called on the Postal Service to fix delays that caused hundreds of ballots to arrive after Election Day in the state in April. In June, A federal judge paused President Donald Trump Implementing regulation The goal was to create a federal voter list and limit who can receive mail-in ballots.
Earlier this year, California election officials urged voters to send their mail-in ballots early, warning that changes in the postal service could lead to a slowdown.
In California, the highest rejection rate for mail-in ballots in June was 3.52% in Tulare County in the agricultural Central Valley. It was followed by Alpine County, south of Lake Tahoe, and Merced County, also in the Central Valley, both of which had a rejection rate of 3.36%.
Mismatched signatures and multiple ballots in one envelope
Nearly 44,000 ballots were withdrawn because the voter’s signature did not match the signature registered with county officials. Over 8,300 ballots were rejected because the returned ballot envelope did not contain a signature.
In 743 cases, the voter had already cast his or her vote, meaning the postal vote was invalid. Other reasons for rejection included missing a ballot in the return envelope or returning multiple ballots in a single envelope.
The data did not break down uncounted ballots by party registration.
Florida, Texas and other populous states are quickly completing vote counting, while California is a laggard nationwide.
After the June primary, President Donald Trump capitalized on California’s reputation as the national laggard in vote counting to renew his longstanding criticism of state elections, while the Republican Justice Department is in charge an investigation has been initiated in the Los Angeles County elections.
There is no evidence of widespread problems with postal voting gained popularity among Democrats and Republicans alike. A Brookings Institution report published in 2025 found that the number of cases of mail-in ballot fraud was minuscule — about four cases per 10 million mail-in ballots.