Hundreds of Thousands of Mailed Ballots Could Be Rejected

There is growing concern that hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots for the November election could be rejected because of voter error.

According to NPR, more than half a million absentee ballots were rejected from the 2020 primaries for various reasons: voters not signing the envelope in which their ballot was mailed, voters mailing them back too late, etc.

FiveThirtyEight noted that the number of rejected mail-in ballots for the general election could be much higher.

During the 2016 election, more than 300,000 mail-in ballots were rejected, an election in which the number of ballots filled out by mail was far lower than what's expected to be this year.

"The risk has always been there," Charles Stewart III, founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Election Data and Science Lab, told FiveThirtyEight.

"What's different this time is that states that don't have histories of large numbers of mail ballots now are getting a large number of mail ballots. And rejection rates for many of those states, which flew under the radar when there was a small number of ballots, are now being highlighted."

What's more, FiveThirtyEight's analysis found that younger voters and voters of color are more likely to have their ballots rejected for the abovementioned reasons.

"I think that the incremental risk of voting by mail is greater than voting in person," Stewart said.

It was reported this week that more than 10 million votes for the election have already been cast.

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