CA Ballot Tracking: How To Find Where Yours Is

CALIFORNIA — Ballots for the primary elections were sent to all California voters on May 9, and need to be returned in a pre-addressed envelope through the mail either by USPS mail or through a designated dropbox.

As with any valuable package sent in the mail, Californians have the ability to track their ballots. The California Secretary of State is offering a “Where’s My Ballot?” tool. Powered by the national ballot tracking company Ballot Trax, it will alert voters to the status of their ballot.

Sign up here to receive updates by text or email as to when your ballot has been received and counted. “Ballot received” will let voters know when their local election office has received their ballot. “Ballot accepted” is the final status update, letting voters know when their ballot has been counted. There is also an option not to receive notifications. Instead, voters cab check their ballot status through the voter portal contained on the same website.

By registering, voters who have not yet received their ballots can also learn the status of their ballot. “Ballot outbound” means the ballot is on its way to their address, and “ballot inbound” means that the Postal Service is in the process of sending the ballot to the county. The service is available for every county in the state.

Of course, no system is perfect — especially when processing millions of ballots. In 2020, an election in which suspicion of malfeasance and worries about the reliability of the U.S. Postal Service abounded, some voters reported especially long lag times between when they were told their ballot was arriving and when they actually received their ballots, according to a December 2020 report in CalMatters. Other voters complained that while they received a message saying their ballot had been received and “will be counted,” they never received a separate message confirming it had been counted.

In the 2022 elections, voters will receive a “ballot accepted” update.

For questions relating to address discrepancies, overseas voting, error messages, managing notifications, privacy, voter registration, and more, visit the Secretary of State’s ballot tracking FAQ website.