Over 1 Million Mail-In Ballots Will Be Rejected, Study Predicts

Boxes with ballots are seen at the Miami-Dade County Election Department as the vote-by-mail ballots are placed on to a U.S. Post Office truck to be delivered to voters, in Doral, Fla., Oct. 1, 2020. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

More than 1 million Americans trying to vote by mail this year can expect that their ballots will be rejected or discarded, according to an analysis based on absentee ballot rejection rates in 2016.

If the rejection rates hold steady—which is a major “if” that the authors acknowledge—at least 1.03 million ballots will be discarded, according to an analysis done by Columbia Journalism Investigations, USA Today, and PBS.