15 million 2020 mail-in ballots unaccounted for

FPI / August 24, 2021

Nearly 15 million mail-in ballots from the 2020 election went unaccounted for, according to a research brief by the Indianapolis-based Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF).

The group collected data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission which showed 14.7 million "unknown ballots." Those ballots were "unable to be tracked," were not returned as voted, or were undeliverable.

"Unknown ballots are the greatest blind spot in the American electoral system," the research brief states.

The brief noted that Joe Biden carried Arizona by 10,457 votes, yet Maricopa County reportedly sent ballots to 110,092 outdated or wrong addresses.

In Nevada, where Biden reportedly won by 33,596 votes, Clark County “bounced” 93,279 ballots.

“The lesson is clear: increased reliance on mass mail voting must correlate with aggressive voter registration list maintenance,” the brief concludes.

The brief notes that many counties across the country had large numbers of “unknown” ballots.

In California, Los Angeles County had 1,491,459 such ballots, followed by Orange County (482,940), Riverside County (454,911), San Diego County (317,614), San Bernardino County (274,937), Santa Clara County (251,840), and Sacramento County (241,367).

Essex County, New Jersey, had 248,290 unknown ballots.

Several states “hastily pushed traditionally in-person voters to mail ballots while, at the same time, trying to learn how to even administer such a scenario,” the group said.

Former Justice Department civil rights attorney J. Christian Adams, now president of PILF, said the results don’t bode well for mail-in voting.

“These figures detail how the 2020 push to mail voting needs to be a one-year experiment,” Adams said in a statement.

Free Press International