SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Elections officials around California threw out 122,480 vote-by-mail ballots cast during the November general election, or 0.9% of all mail-in ballots, according to data from the Secretary of State’s office.

The vast majority of those were tossed because they arrived late, had mismatched voter signatures or no signature at all.

Elections officials are supposed to notify a voter if their mail-in ballot has a signature issue and provide an opportunity to “cure,” or fix it. But they’re not always successful, leaving those ballots uncounted.

An analysis of mail ballot rejections during the 2024 election by USC’s Center for Inclusive Democracy found that 59% had a nonmatching voter signature, 27% were mailed or arrived after the deadline, and 11% had no signature. The other 3% were thrown out for other unspecified reasons.

Young voters most likely to have ballots tossed

Voters between the ages of 18 and 24 were more likely to have their ballot rejected, most commonly for a mismatched signature. More than 3% percent of all mail ballots cast by this group were ultimately thrown out during the 2024 presidential election.

There are a few reasons for this, experts told the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee during a Tuesday hearing on ballot rejections.

For one, first-time voters may simply be unfamiliar with the process and more likely to make mistakes.

Younger people are also more likely to register to vote online, either with the Secretary of State or another online site, or they’re automatically registered through the DMV. In both cases, the signature on file with the DMV becomes the signature the voter’s mail-in ballot is matched against.

But DMV signatures are recorded using a digital pad and stylus, which can lead to discrepancies from a person’s written signature, said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy.

“It’s more likely to be a bad signature from the DMV or a signature that’s changed over time,” she said. “It’s always been a concern that young people don’t have that traditional signature.”

Kim Alexander, president of the nonprofit California Voter Foundation, raised concerns about the impact of a first-time voter having their ballot rejected.

“People don’t like to do things they feel they’re not good at,” she said. “If people are voting for the first time and have gone through all that process and then are being told ‘you didn’t get it right,’ are they going to come back? I don’t know. I worry about that.”

While 0.9% of all mail ballots seems like a low number, elections experts point out that some races are decided by a small handful of votes.

Voting advocates also raised concerns that signature verification rules are not being applied equally across all counties.

According to a California Voter Foundation analysis, Imperial County had the highest rejection rate during the 2024 election, with 2.5% of ballots tossed. The lowest rejection rate was in Amador County, which threw out 0.17%, or just 34 ballots.

“We need to make sure these regulations are being consistently followed in all 58 counties,” Alexander said.

Voting experts said there was some good news: over the past decade, mail-in ballot rejection rates have dropped from a high of nearly 3% during the 2014 primary. During that time, the most common reason for rejection has also shifted from late arrivals to issues with signature matching.

Romero underscored that there is “no tangible evidence in any way in California of voter fraud.”

“It seems like the signature verification process often gets linked to the fraud question,” she said. While some Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have attacked vote-by-mail, it remains popular among all voting populations in California.

____

©2025 The Sacramento Bee. Visit at sacbee.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.