California law says absentee ballots must arrive in the hands of election officials by closing hour on election day, or they can’t be counted. This story shows that at least 12,563 Riverside County absentee ballots won’t be counted, because they were not put into the hands of election officials until the day after the election.
The post office and elections officials generally depend on election officials visiting post offices and picking up ballots on election day. But the 12,563 ballots in the Moreno Valley postal processing center were not picked up on election day. Election officials say they expected the ballots to be in the Riverside post office, and thus didn’t visit the Moreno Valley post office on election day.
Before 1961, California absentee ballots were valid if they had been postmarked by election day. But in the 1960 presidential election, votes counted by the day after the election showed John F. Kennedy carrying California in the presidential election. It took several weeks for the 1960 absentee ballots to be counted, and when they had been counted, it turned out Richard Nixon had carried California. Democrats in the state legislature were so upset by this unexpected reversal that they changed the law, to provide that only absentee ballots in the hands of election officials by election day would be valid.