Thousands of vote-by-mail ballots throughout California sit in county registrar offices right now and will never get counted. Some signatures on ballot envelopes don’t match the one on the voter registration cards, other ballots are from previous elections, but the most common reason ballots don’t get counted is that they were not in the county’s hands by 8 p.m. election night. An Election Day postmark is not good enough and many counties don’t notify voters their ballot won’t be counted.
“I think it’s a dirty little secret we’re keeping from voters, quite frankly, this vote-by-mail ballot s that are too late to get counted,” California Voter Foundation spokesperson Kim Alexander said. “It’s very upsetting. The only thing worse than people not voting, in my view, is people who have voted, who believe their vote has been put in and is counted and it’s not.”
In 2008, nearly half a million ballots were not counted in the three statewide elections that year.
Los Angeles County currently has more than 6,000 late ballots, Santa Clara has nearly 2,000 and Sacramento County’s count is approaching 1,500.
Voter turnout could actually be raised if late ballots were included.
Full Article: Thousands of ballots won’t be counted | news10.net.