Rise in mail voting comes with price: Mismatched signatures lead to ballot rejections

HONOLULU– Like many voters on Maui, Joshua Kamalo thought the race for president wasn’t the only big battle in the November election. He was also focused on a hotly contested local government seat.

He made sure to return his ballot early in the form of almost exclusively mail-in voting, two weeks before Election Day. A week later, he received a letter saying the county could not verify his signature on the return envelope, putting his vote in jeopardy.

And he wasn’t the only one. Two other people at the biodiesel company where he works also had their ballots rejected, as did his daughter. In both cases, the county said their signatures did not match signatures on file.

“I don’t know how they solve that, but I don’t think it’s right,” said Kamalo, a truck driver who fought through traffic congestion and limited parking to get to the district office so he could sign an affidavit confirming that the signature was indeed his.

He said he probably wouldn’t have bothered to fix it if the race for South Maui County Council wasn’t so close. The co-founder of his employer, Pacific Biodiesel, was the candidate who ultimately ended up on the losing side.

Kamalo’s experience is part of a broader problem as mail-in voting becomes more popular and more states opt to send ballots to all voters. Matching signatures on returned ballot envelopes with the official signatures on file at local polling places can be a laborious process, sometimes by humans and sometimes by automation, and can result in dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of ballots being rejected.

If the voter cannot correct it in time, the ballot will not count.

“There’s been a big push toward mail-in voting in recent years, and I think the tradeoffs aren’t always clear to voters,” said Larry Norden, an elections and government expert at the Brennan Center for Justice.

He said it is important that states and local governments have procedures in place to ensure that large numbers of eligible voters by mail do not become disenfranchised.

The use of mail-in ballots exploded in 2020 as states looked for ways to accommodate voters during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight states and the District of Columbia now have universal voting by mail, with all active registered voters receiving a mail-in ballot unless they opt out.

At least 30 states require election officials to notify voters if there is a problem with their ballot and give them a chance to fix it — or “cure.” Some have complained that the time allowed for this is too short.

Nevada, a key presidential battleground, is among the states sending mail-in ballots to all registered voters. In November, county election offices rejected about 9,000 ballots, mainly due to signature issues.

That didn’t affect the outcome of the state’s presidential race, which Donald Trump won by 46,000 votes, but it could have changed the outcome in several downvotes. Some state legislative seats in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas and where more than half of rejected mail-in ballots were found, were determined by just a few hundred votes. The North Las Vegas City Council race, also in Clark County, was decided by just nine votes.

“We’ve had issues with signature healing since we adopted universal voting by mail in 2020 during the pandemic, and it seems to be getting worse,” said Sondra Cosgrove, professor of history at the College of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas and executive director of Stem op Nevada, a citizens’ organization. “This is something that is a crisis level that needs to be resolved.”

The possibility of signature match issues affecting closed races has led some voting rights groups in the state to call for an overhaul of the verification process.

“We need to find the best option for the future for people that is more accessible, that ensures that their votes and ballots are counted on time, because it’s crazy when you think that the difference maker is eight or nine votes,” said Christian Solomon, the state director of Rise Nevada, a youth-led community engagement group.

Nevada voters already took a step toward a possible solution in November when they approved – by 73% – a constitutional amendment requiring voters to identify themselves in order to vote. If you vote by mail, a driver’s license or social security number is required in addition to the signature. Voters will have to approve the amendment a second time within two years for it to take effect.

Dave Gibbs, chairman of the Repair the Vote PAC, which wrote the amendment, said he was inspired by a law passed in 2021 in another presidential swing state, Georgia.

That state ended the signature check process and instead now requires voters to provide their driver’s license number or state identification card number when returning a ballot, said Mike Hassinger, spokesman for the Georgia secretary of state’s office. Most voting there happens early, but in person.

Critics say such ID requirements would be too burdensome for states like Hawaii, where ballots make up the vast majority of votes.

On Maui, the number of rejected mail-in ballots led to a lawsuit challenging the results of the local county council election, where the margin of victory was just 97 votes.

The lawsuit alleges that hundreds of ballots were not counted because the county clerk falsely claimed they arrived in envelopes with signatures that did not match those on file. Lawyer Lance Collins said his clients wanted a new election in the race between Tom Cook and his client, Kelly King.

Six voters submitted a statement saying their signature on the ballot was inadequate, even though they believed there was nothing wrong with it.

Collins said that under state administrative rules, a returned ballot envelope is presumed to be the voter’s and should be counted unless there is evidence to suggest it does not belong to the voter. He also said the province’s rejection rate was significantly higher than the national average.

Maui County attorneys responded in a lawsuit that the signature verification process followed the law. On December 24, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed and declared Cook the winner. The judges said the clerk gave voters reasonable notice and opportunity to correct the defect on their ballot.

Still, many voters on Maui have shared similar stories of being told their signatures didn’t match. Resident Grace Min, who was not part of the lawsuit, was among those who received one of the letters.

“I just find it highly unusual that my (vote) signature would not match my signature,” she said.

She had been paying particular attention to the battle for county council, which she knew would be close, so it was important that she ensure her vote was counted. She emailed an affidavit confirming the ballot was hers, but also had questions about the verification process and was concerned that the time allowed for ballot recovery was so short.

“I have to imagine there have been people who haven’t changed their signatures,” Min said, “and that doesn’t seem very fair.”

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