More than 4,300 Sacramento County ballots rejected in November election
SACRAMENTO — "Every vote counts" — it's a common phrase heard before elections, but it turns out not to be true in Sacramento and other California counties.
Barbara Ramm is a volunteer who helped people register to vote, and she's frustrated that thousands of Sacramento ballots from November's election were rejected by the county elections office.
"It's incredibly disappointing because hundreds of us put so much time and effort into this election volunteering our time," Ramm said.
County spokesman Ken Casparis said that ballots cannot be counted if they don't comply with rules in place to protect election integrity.
"Everybody has to sign them so that we can verify that the person who cast that vote is the person that the ballot was mailed to," Casparis said.
How many votes in Sacramento County didn't count?
The county said 2,893 ballots were rejected because voter signatures did not match or were missing from mail-in envelopes. Another 1,263 were rejected because they were not postmarked or received by the state's deadline.
Another 200 ballots didn't count due to various other violations, making a total of 4,357 rejected ballots.
"That seems, can I just say 'un-American,' " Ramm said.
Ramm was concerned that the uncounted ballots could have impacted the race for Sacramento mayor, which was decided by less than 2,000 votes, saying, "that turns an election."
"I don't know that that would have made a difference, and we'll never know because those ballots go uncounted," Casparis said.
Casparis noted the county spent weeks after the election trying to resolve signature discrepancies.
"We'll reach out to the voter any way we can based on the information that we have from them in their voter file," he said.
Ramm said there needs to be more outreach in the future.
"I want them to acknowledge that things aren't working as well as they could be, that the goal is for every vote to count," she said.
Sacramento's rejection rate was less than 1% of the 668,000 ballots received and was about the same percent as Los Angeles and San Diego counties.
