It’s arguably the most important debate topic in the country right now: the issue of election integrity.
Many citizens aren’t convinced that our current system is 100% accurate, and they claim that mail-in ballots can lead to significant fraud. Several political leaders have expressed concern about this as well.
And now, one of the biggest problems with mail-in ballots has come out.
Critics have often said that with millions and millions of ballots sent to prospective voters, it becomes impossible to keep track of those ballots. And just about anything can happen after the ballots are sent.
The result is this — the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has revealed that many millions of ballots were “unaccounted for” in the state’s 2022 elections.
The number is disturbing and it’s likely to gain plenty of traction among Republicans and other critics of the current system.
From Breitbart:
In 2022, California election officials mailed out more than 22.1 million ballots to registered voters, the data published by PILF shows.
Of those, more than 10.8 million went “unaccounted for” as researchers said election officials can only make assumptions as to what happened with the ballots.
PILF researchers made a point that “significant issues arise” when ballots aren’t accounted for at closing time. But this can’t be avoided with mail-in ballots.
The report made it clear that most likely, the majority of those 10.8 million ballots were ignored or thrown out. However, that’s only an assumptions and the researchers added:
Mail voting practices have an insurmountable information gap.
The public cannot know how many ballots were disregarded, delivered to wrong mailboxes, or even withheld from the proper recipient by someone at the same address.
Chart via Public Interest Legal Foundation
Additionally, it’s important to remember that over 226,000 mail-ins were rejected in the California 2022 primary and general elections, and over 120,000 ballots that were tossed out in the general election.
57,000 more were rejected for coming in late, and 48,000 were rejected for not having a matching signature, while 12,000 were rejected for having no signature.
PILF President J. Christian Adams stated that “mail ballots disenfranchise.” And he delivered this warning:
There are many reasons mail ballots fail ultimately to count. No one casting a ballot at home can correct an error before it’s too late.
California’s vote-by-mail demonstration should serve as a warning to state legislators elsewhere.
This is precisely what so many citizens are worried about. If we can’t rely on our system to be completely accurate, it becomes more difficult to trust election results (especially when the races are close).
It’s going to be a massive topic of concern moving forward, and will probably come into the spotlight again in 2024.
The question then will be: what percentage of voters trust our election system?
Key Takeaways:
- A new report revealed that 10.8 million mail-in ballots went “unaccounted for” in 2022 California elections.
- Most were likely ignored or thrown away, but there’s no way to know what exactly happened to so many ballots.
- PILF President J. Christian Adams said this report should serve as a “warning to state legislators elsewhere.”
Source: Breitbart
