Voters who did not follow a new Montana law requiring electors write their birth year on the envelope of an absentee ballot had the chance to fix the issue if they responded to a call, mailed notice or email from their local election department, but thousands of ballots still ended up in the rejected pile when all the counting was finalized.
According to the Secretary of State’s office, “only one percent” of ballots were rejected due to a missing or mismatched birth year. However, some counties had rejection rates significantly higher than one percent, and almost all large counties saw higher rates than previous elections.
The Secretary of State’s office did not provide any aggregate data showing the statewide rejection rate, and did not respond to several questions from the Daily Montanan about the new process, including specifics about cases of potential fraud the office said were prevented due the new law.
In a press release, the office celebrated a successful election across the state, and the new law which allowed “election officials to efficiently and securely verify each voter.”
In Yellowstone County, 31,563 ballots were accepted, and 1,400 total ballots were initially rejected, according to election administrator Dayna Causby, nearly 4.5%.
Of the rejected ballots, roughly 1,100 were rejected due to a missing or incorrect birth year.
While more than 800 ballots were resolved by voters notified about the error, the rejection rate after all resolutions was 2.03%….