Late ballots yield California election cliffhanger

By John Hrabe | Cal Watchdog

As more Californians turn to absentee voting, election officials have seen an uptick in the number of potentially valid ballots that aren’t being counted.

That’s because, under state law, ballots must be received by the local registrar of voters by Election Day, not postmarked that day or en route to an elections office.

“California doesn’t have the infamous hanging-chad or butterfly ballot,” Paul Mitchell, vice-president of Political Data Inc., wrote in a recent op-ed piece in the Sacramento Bee. “Piles of ballots are marked ‘too late’ because the mail arrived after Election Day.”

Sacramento County Registrar of Voters Jill Levine, who has been tracking the number of “too late to count ballots” statewide, estimates that as many as 20,000 otherwise valid ballots in the June 3 primary were received too late. With more than 4 million ballots counted so far, these “too late to count” ballots make up less than half a percent of total votes cast statewide.

at Cal Watchdog.