Less than a quarter of California mail ballots came back before Election Day — including the “zombies”

The first batch of votes counted when California polls close tonight will be the more than 3.7 million ballots already mailed in — and a chunk of those will contain “zombie votes” for president.

Not votes for literal zombies, of course — it’s a term politicos use to describe votes cast for candidates who have pulled the plug on their own campaigns. And three Democratic contenders did just that in the past few days.