BALLOTS REJECTED
Once a completed ballot arrives at a local
election office, the voter’s eligibility and identity
must be verified. Sometimes, missing signatures
or unsealed or damaged envelopes can gum up
the process.
In Jefferson County, Kentucky, the state’s largest,
3,848 absentee ballots were rejected in the June
primary due to lack of a voter signature. That
was out of roughly 180,000 absentee ballots
cast. Not all states give voters a quick and easy
way to fix these problems.
Veteran vote-by-mail states send out periodic
mailers to verify voter addresses and get
updated signatures. They also have built “ballot-
curing” measures into existing systems in case
voter signatures don’t match what’s on record
or ballot envelopes arrive damaged or missing
required information. But such systems are far
from universal and their absence has led to
lawsuits in some states.
The complexity of signature matching is a
major issue. Many election offices register
voter signatures from a variety of sources
-- for instance, those scribbled with styluses
on cramped touchscreens at motor vehicle
departments. The result: A matching process
prone to human error.
“It’s terrible, but it’s the best option we have,”
said Jennifer Morrell, a former elections official
in Colorado and Utah. Rigorous training and
bipartisan teams reviewing signatures can help
mitigate some of the concerns, but people’s
signatures change over time and physical
ledgers capturing these changes are an
endangered species.