Absentee votes rejected in large numbers

County officials rejected an unusually large number of late-arriving absentee ballots in last month's elections. Interviews with voters suggest that much of the blame lies with flaws in the county's system for distributing the ballots.

More than 4,000 voters mailed in their ballots too late last month for officials to count them. Two dozen voters who spoke with The Californian since late May, including two residents whose names were included in a newly released list of rejected ballots, said they didn't receive the mailed absentee ballots until a day or two before the June 6 election.

Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore has said her office mailed out ballots to all permanent absentee voters by May 15, three weeks before the election. Absentee ballots requested for the single election were sent May 15-31, Dunmore said.


It's virtually impossible to determine exactly how many of those 4,000 voters received their ballots in time to return them by the June 6 deadline. Interviews with several of those voters suggest that hundreds of them did not receive them in time. Other voters said they received absentee ballots after Election Day.

Dunmore said glitches in the postal system may have been to blame.

Voters who didn't receive absentee ballots on time could still cast provisional ballots at the polls. Officials check those provisional ballots against rosters in the days after an election to prevent double voting.

Several voters said they didn't know they could do this. Jenifer Ball, a Perris resident who said she received her absentee ballot June 1, assumed that her ballot would be counted if she marked her choices and mailed the ballot the next day.

"I thought, 'Maybe that's how they do it; I guess I'll just go ahead and put it in the mail,'" said Ball, a registered Republican.

Unlike taxpayers, who must ensure that their returns are postmarked by April 15, voters in Riverside and most other counties must mail their ballots several days before the deadline to ensure that the registrar's office receives them on time.

Republican and Democratic party officials say they've had to put in extra effort to get that message out to voters. Kevin Jeffries, the Republican nominee for the 66th District Assembly seat, said GOP volunteers called permanent absentee voters before the election to tell them to mail their ballots several days before the deadline.

Doug Dye, who manages the campaign of Jeffries' Democratic opponent, Laurel Nicholson, said he is doing the same in preparation for the November general election. Dye recently obtained from Dunmore's office a database showing the names and addresses of registered voters, and whether their votes had been counted at the polls, with absentee ballots, or not at all.

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