Tag Archives: ballot signature verification

The Problem With Mail-In Ballots

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On Monday, The Independent Journal Review posted an article about signature verification used on mail-in ballots in Nevada.

The article reports:

For the second congressional election in a row, a journalist has demonstrated that there is a potential hole that could be exploited in the way one Nevada county deals with mail-in ballots.

In 2020, columnist Victor Joecks of the Las Vegas Review-Journal tested Clark County, Nevada’s signature verification process for mail-in ballots, and found that eight ballots were accepted in which the handwriting on the envelope containing the ballot and the ballot itself was different.

This year, six ballots made it through, he wrote in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“I had 11 people send me a picture of their ballot envelope. I then wrote their name in my handwriting. Each voter then copied my version of their signature onto their ballot return envelope.

“They sent me a picture to ensure it wasn’t their normal handwriting. This simulated signing someone else’s ballot,” he wrote. “It’s also legal because each voter signed his or her own ballot.”

In a perfect system, all 11 would have been set aside, he said. Instead, only five failed to make it through.

So according to what he did, it is possible that slightly over half of the ballots accepted could have invalid signatures.

The article concludes:

Nevada voters had until Monday to resolve problems with mail-in ballots, a process known as curing.

Joe Gloria, Clark County’s registrar of voters, said that as of Saturday there were 14,651 uncured ballots in his county, of which 7,139 remained unresolved as of Saturday, according to The Washington Post.

Let’s just all go to the polls on election day like we used to. I would even allow one extra day, but I would not allow mail-in ballots. There is too much opportunity for fraud.

Too Little Too Late

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The Epoch Times reported the following today:

A Michigan judge ruled last week that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s last October guidance relating to ballot signature verification was not in compliance with the law and thus it’s invalid.

Michigan Republican Party and Allegan County clerk Robert Genetski filed the lawsuit on Nov. 2, 2020, against Benson and Jonathan Brater, director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections.

The plaintiffs claimed that the guidance Benson issued last October violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and should be nullified. They also asked the court to declare that they have the right to request an audit of their choosing, saying the state-wide audit in November did not review whether signatures were properly evaluated.

On Oct. 6, 2020, Benson issued guidance titled “Absent Voter Ballot Processing: Signature Verification and Voter Notification Standards.”

The guidance stated that clerks “must perform their signature verification duties with the presumption that the voter’s application or envelope signature is his or her genuine signature.”

The guidance also said signatures “should be considered questionable” only if they differ “in multiple, significant and obvious respects from the signature on file,” according to the court order (pdf). “Whenever possible,” election officials were to resolve “slight dissimilarities” in favor of finding that the signature was valid.

This is too little too late. The Secretary of State did not have the authority to change the law–that is the job of the legislature. Unfortunately, there were similar events in numerous states leading up to the 2020 election. I don’t believe there is anything we can do to change the results of the 2020 election, regardless of how valid or invalid those results were, but we need to make sure that in the future all of the states follow their own laws.