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High Number Of Mail-In And Absentee Primary Ballots Rejected : NPR
Well a large number of ballots were rejected in 2020 primaries, still fractions of a percent of the overall, but still high. Apparently signing a ballot is difficult.
One some level, the higher numbers are expected given the higher number of people voting by mail this year. So we'd likely see an absolute number increase. And with luck, people have figured out a bit more during the primaries, so when they're voting in the general election they are a bit more comfortable with the process. The biggest rejection States are places like NY and California. Surprisingly, Washington was high on that list. They've run a mail-in system for awhile, I'm surprised that they'd made it. Colorado, Oregon, Utah, and Hawaii weren't even on the list. I'd figure Washington would have known how to vote by mail.
Perhaps we're gonna need to run some educational ads on properly mailing in a ballot. The problem is that the rejection is disproportional, hitting minorities at higher rates than whites. But fundamentally, voting by mail isn't hard. Yes, many of the states are dumb and not as intelligent and advanced as Colorado (lol), which figured out the Gold Standard of mail-in voting, but it's still not a difficult premise. Right? Fill out your ballot, sign it, send it back in.
There's a lot at stake this election cycle and already a lot of disinformation and propaganda thrown at our voting systems. People should vote, people need to vote, and they need to educate themselves not only on the candidates but on proper mail-in procedures if they plan on mail-in voting. But I do suppose that if mail-in voting seems confusing or one isn't confident in the process, then it may be best to vote in person. Though in that case we need to be opening up more polling centers, not decreasing them, as the GOP has done, particularly in districts populated with higher numbers of minorities.
We need to be able to have faith in our election system. And I hope that after 2020, more States will turn to Colorado to figure out how to properly set up mail-in voting systems.
Election experts said first-time absentee voters are much more likely to make the kinds of mistakes that lead to rejected ballots. Studies also show that voters of color and young voters are more likely than others to have their ballots not count.
Most absentee or mail-in ballots are rejected because required signatures are missing or don't match the one on record, or because the ballot arrives too late.
"If something goes wrong with any of this, that's a problem writ large, but it's also going to be one that hits some populations of the United States a bit harder than others, potentially disenfranchises different groups of folks at higher rates," said Rob Griffin of the Democracy Fund, which is conducting a sweeping survey of the 2020 electorate with researchers at UCLA.
Well a large number of ballots were rejected in 2020 primaries, still fractions of a percent of the overall, but still high. Apparently signing a ballot is difficult.
One some level, the higher numbers are expected given the higher number of people voting by mail this year. So we'd likely see an absolute number increase. And with luck, people have figured out a bit more during the primaries, so when they're voting in the general election they are a bit more comfortable with the process. The biggest rejection States are places like NY and California. Surprisingly, Washington was high on that list. They've run a mail-in system for awhile, I'm surprised that they'd made it. Colorado, Oregon, Utah, and Hawaii weren't even on the list. I'd figure Washington would have known how to vote by mail.
Perhaps we're gonna need to run some educational ads on properly mailing in a ballot. The problem is that the rejection is disproportional, hitting minorities at higher rates than whites. But fundamentally, voting by mail isn't hard. Yes, many of the states are dumb and not as intelligent and advanced as Colorado (lol), which figured out the Gold Standard of mail-in voting, but it's still not a difficult premise. Right? Fill out your ballot, sign it, send it back in.
There's a lot at stake this election cycle and already a lot of disinformation and propaganda thrown at our voting systems. People should vote, people need to vote, and they need to educate themselves not only on the candidates but on proper mail-in procedures if they plan on mail-in voting. But I do suppose that if mail-in voting seems confusing or one isn't confident in the process, then it may be best to vote in person. Though in that case we need to be opening up more polling centers, not decreasing them, as the GOP has done, particularly in districts populated with higher numbers of minorities.
We need to be able to have faith in our election system. And I hope that after 2020, more States will turn to Colorado to figure out how to properly set up mail-in voting systems.