California’s push to make voting easier hit another snag after nearly 150,000 mail-in ballots were rejected in the state’s June primary, marking a sharp increase from recent election cycles despite years of changes aimed at boosting participation and ensuring every vote is counted.
The Golden State has long faced criticism over lengthy vote-counting periods that can stretch for weeks after Election Day. Over the years, lawmakers have adopted a series of election changes designed to increase voter turnout, including automatically mailing every registered voter a ballot and allowing ballots to arrive up to seven days after Election Day as long as they carry an Election Day postmark.
But state data shows that the biggest reason ballots were rejected wasn’t that they arrived after the deadline. Instead, most were disqualified because they were postmarked too late.
According to California Secretary of State data, 148,241 mail ballots were rejected during the June primary, representing 1.73% of all mail ballots cast.
That marks a noticeable increase from the 2024 primary, when 108,982 mail ballots were rejected, or 1.56% of mail ballots. During the 2022 primary, 105,818 ballots were rejected at a rate similar to 2024.
Late ballots accounted for 93,479 of the rejected ballots in June, making it by far the leading reason ballots were tossed out. By comparison, roughly 70,000 ballots were rejected for lateness in the 2022 primary and about 76,000 in the 2024 primary, although turnout in both elections was lower than this year’s governor’s race.
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Election experts believe many of the rejected ballots may have received postmarks after Election Day, rendering them ineligible under state law. Some have also pointed to changes within the U.S. Postal Service that could affect when ballots receive official postmarks.
Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, said the increase in late ballot rejections raises significant concerns. She suggested the trend could be tied both to postal processing procedures and a wave of last-minute voting during the highly competitive governor’s race.
“Ballots rejected due to lateness are caused primarily [by] being postmarked too late to count, not because they arrived too late to count,” Alexander wrote in an email.
Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy, a nonpartisan research organization, said rejection rates naturally fluctuate from election to election. However, she argued the growing number of ballots rejected for lateness compared with recent primaries deserves closer scrutiny.
The increase in rejected mail ballots comes as California continues expanding vote-by-mail access in an effort to make elections more accessible, even as critics argue the state’s election process remains slow and increasingly complicated.
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