Reader Question: Ballot Rejections
Patrick Houlihan from Arkadelphia, Arkansas: What are the most common reasons why a mail-in ballot is rejected? I’ve read that they can be rejected when a signature doesn’t match the official record; how far off does a signature have to be to cause a problem? Which states allow voters to correct mail-in ballots after they’ve been rejected?
Research suggests that the most common reasons a mail-in ballot is rejected are:
- The ballot wasn’t received by the deadline
- The signature is missing
- The signature doesn’t match
Signature matching is an infamously imprecise art, and there are no hard and fast rules to determine how “off” is too off. Earlier this month, the New York Times contacted election officials in every state that has a signature matching component to their vote verification process, and found that just six had statewide guidelines or training materials. (And the level of detail in statewide guidance differs dramatically.)
The decision to allow voters to correct, or cure, ballots also happens on a state-by-state basis. Eighteen states have laws on the books requiring that voters are notified of and given an opportunity to fix a missing signature or other signature discrepancy, ranging from states that conduct majority-mail elections, like Colorado and Washington, to states that conduct majority in-person elections, like Massachusetts and Georgia. Another three (Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia) have passed laws creating some type of curing process for 2020.