Ever meet anybody who’s even able to sign their own name the same way on a consistent basis? I, personally, am not a calligraphy enthusiast. My handwriting has been shit my entire life, to the point where I don’t even try to sign my full name anymore; I just go with my first initial, the first letter of my last name, and a big line behind it.
I don’t hold my pen the “proper” way; when my first-grade teacher insisted on me holding my pencil between my middle finger and thumb in a pinch, it gave me blisters.
And people’s signatures change over time as their hands start to shake.
How can Republicans think signature verification is a good idea? I think they’re simply looking for a way to disenfranchise a lot of people like they always do, because less people voting means an advantage for Republicans. It’s a solution in search of a problem.
It seems like a fabulous idea for Republicans, since verifying that a signature matches is inherently extremely subjective, allowing us to verify whether the appropriate people are voting. The one improvement I could envision is that the person must sign in the presence of the verifier, so that their skin color is visible.
My signature is pretty much just a scribble. They’ve never rejected my ballot. Or even called me to verify it. We’ve been all mail voting for quite awhile now.
As long as your first initial, second letter, and scribble is consistent, it’s fine. As I’ve mentioned in other voting threads, my daughter’s mail-in ballot was initially rejected – her signature at 18 was too different than it is now. She got it fixed and her vote counted.
All we do in NJ is signature verification, as far as I know. I’ve never been asked for an ID, but they hand me something to sign, and they compare it to the signature on file.
And yet, I’ve had my signature on record with the Oregon Secretary of State for over 25 years now, I vote in every election, all of our elections are mail in only and somehow I’ve never once had a ballot held for verification of my signature. So premise of the OP seems pretty shaky, given that every other Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Hawaii and Utah resident manages to vote with signature verification as well–and Oregon at least tends to have a higher voter turnout than states that require in person voting. So where’s all that disenfranchisement then? Oh yeah, it’s in states where they decide to have like two voting machines for the entire population to use and they purge the voter rolls of perfectly fine and active voters every election cycle using nebulous justifications for their actions.
I think the OP is worried about a situation where a bad actor decides to reject the signature of Spanish or African American-sounding names, or from minority areas, because the signature “didn’t match”.
Simple hack–make your signature illegible. I guarantee you would only be able to infer that my name has a C, maybe an L and possibly an I in it because I always put the dot in. Other than that, no chance could you know what ethnicity my name reflects lol.
Also, as we’ve seen time and again, bad actors don’t actually NEED an excuse to wipe voters off the face of the earth, they just…do it.
Oregon here as well. I’ve had to verify my signature once. It changed over the years and was finally so dissimilar to the one the SoS had on file that they flagged me. Basically they sent me a letter (after the election) saying 1) yes, my ballot was counted, but 2) the signature on the envelope wasn’t a clear match so any subsequent ballots would not be unless 3) I filled out a form including my current signature that they would then compare to the one on my most recent ballot. I jumped through their hoops and never heard anything more about it.
In the past, Republicans were richer and more educated than Democrats. So they would be more likely to have ID, and probably were more determined to vote. But now that Democrats are more educated, and, in the Trump era, highly motivated to vote, this is becoming an issue where the tribes are pushing against their own self-interest.
Some Democrats say, and sincerely believe, that having more people vote is a plus regardless of results. Back when the choice was between Wilkie and Roosevelt, yes. But in the Trump era, I think Democrats can be a bit more self-interested.
This from a pollster rated A by 538 is thus a legitimate consideration:
As someone who’s previously worked during elections for the local Elections Office, I can confirm that Oregon does check all signatures on the ballot envelopes against the signatures on file. At least they do in my county (Washington County), which is the second largest in the state and I’m pretty sure they do it in all counties. Doing so does not significantly delay the release of the voting resutls.
Illinois uses signature verification at the polling place. As an election judge, I found it fairly easy to determine if the person there to vote was the person on the roll. Each judge was part of one of the two major parties, and every signature had to be approved by both a Dem and Rep judge.
I think our signatures evolve over time a little bit, we may tend to be a little sloppier. Verifying signatures is just an excuse for nefarious types to be a little more picky when checking the signatures of Tyrone Washington and Julio Rodriguez then they are of checking Winthorpe Wellington.
I understand this thread has drifted, but I thought the OP was more concerned about bad actors rejecting signatures of people with the “wrong names” or from the “wrong areas” if you get my drift.
If some signatures get rejected because they really don’t match, that’s easily corrected. If half the signatures from the other side of the tracks are rejected, that will be harder to fix.
My wife scribbles her signature- as such, her signature has always been about the same level of illegibility. It bears no relation at all to her name.
On the other hand, I’m an artist- I developed my signature to be unique and still legible. It’s evolved a bit over the years, though- while similar, it would be very easy to point to differences over the decades.
My signature is a lot more likely to be challenged than hers is.