Ok, but how do you overcome all the other obstacles I raised in my post #318?
I think we’re looking at this from opposite sides. I’m not talking about a situation where someone is illegitimately signing other people’s ballots. I’m saying that my ballot is legitimate. I submitted it and I signed it. There is nobody in the world who is qualified to determine this based on my signature.
But aren’t you then saying that states like mine that conduct elections entirely through vote-by-mail aren’t capable of certifying a valid election?
No. I’m saying that if states have a mail in system, then nobody should be able to reject a ballot solely for a “mismatched” signature.
Mmmm. I’ll have to chew on that awhile. I’m not sure how I feel about it in this moment. But thanks for clarifying your position.
I think the odds that a mismatched signature means there is fraud is much, much, much lower than the odds that the person’s signature doesn’t match because they signed it on the dashboard of his car while sitting in the parking lot of the post office.
You’re all missing the point, or several. There are additional methods of validating the returned envelopes besides handwriting analysis. (It’s possible that the handwriting doesn’t even matter all that much, unless it’s grossly mismatched, IMNSPO [in my not so professional opinion].)
At least in CA, there are additional identifying marks. Every ballot return envelope has the voter’s full name, but also various code numbers and a bar code. So when the election office receives it, they can scan the bar code, not to mention see the name pre-printed on the envelope.
If the signature on MY envelope is legible and appears to be MY name, then either:
- It’s legit, and really signed by ME, or
- Somebody else got hold of my envelope and signed my name on it.
If it’s case (2), then that means that I myself didn’t get my own envelope, and I would likely call the election office to complain about that (if I cared enough).
OTOH, if somebody else signs MY name on any other envelope, then the signed name won’t be the same as the printed name, and the bar code would be wrong. (Set aside the case of people having the same name.) They would certainly catch that.
I believe there are additional security measures as well that we, the general public, don’t even know about.
So I think Fiveyearlurker and similar ilk are just making up some paranoid nonsense to argue that millions of ballots, mostly legitimate, should all be dumped in ditches because of the possibility that a few attempted frauds might go uncaught.
Shit, my signature doesn’t change from year to year, it can change from day to day.
Handwriting analysis has nothing whatsoever to do with matching signatures. Handwriting analysis has to do with trying to figure out the personality of a person by their handwriting. Yes, it is true, while a few obvious details can be made out, trying to figure if someone is a "leader’ or “criminally inclined” is bushwa, and baloney.
But that has nothing whatsoever to do with matching signatures. That is pretty easy to do, with like a couple hours training.
Here this article by cecil is just as germane to this issue:
Dear Cecil:
Where is Podunk?
Thomas G., Dallas
Cecil replies:
You’re not the first guy to wonder about this, Tomaso. As a matter of fact, the search for Podunk, the archetypal jerkwater town, is one of the great adventures of philology, which, as you can probably appreciate, is not a field that has great adventures in abundance.
Allow me to quote from a letter to the editors of the Daily National Pilot , Buffalo, New York, 1846: “I hear you ask, Where in the world is Podunk?’ It is in the world, sir; and more than that, is a little world of itself. It stands high up the big Pigeon [river],’ a bright and shining light amid the surrounding darkness.” There is a great deal more, all in a satirical vein, indicating that even then Podunk was thought to be a locality which, being imaginary, one might safely have a little fun with.
The idea that Podunk was purely mythical survived a long time. In 1925 philologist G.P. Krapp noted that no Podunk was to be found in the list of American post offices, which he took to be proof of the town’s nonexistence — an alarming conclusion, given current opinions of the post office, but Krapp’s was an innocent age. His one concession to the reality of Podunk was that it was an Indian word that had been applied to a few minor geographic features in New England.
The link I provided discussed both issues and the Supreme Court case cited therein discussed matching signatures and its inaccuracy.
With all due respect, I made very clear above that I’m arguing exactly the opposite of what you are ascribing to me. I (and my ilk, whoever that is) are arguing that ballots with “mismatched” signatures be counted along with all the other ballots.
Are you in California? Here, and I think in at least some other states, there are procedures in place to deal with this. If mail-in ballots are rejected for various reasons, the election officials will attempt to contact the voter to fix the deficiency.
Furthermore, you are able to track your ballot on line. I have seen it mentioned in the news that ALL states have some mechanism for doing this. So you will be able to know if your ballot gets counted. And if it is not, at least in some states you should have a chance to fix it.
I shouldn’t have to have a chance to fix it. It should just be accepted unless it can be proven to be fraudulent. This is a system that allows one person, with very limited training in an area where expertise doesn’t even mean much of anything, to add an extra step on certain ballots. The burden should be on that poll worker to prove that the ballot IS fraudulent, and not the voter to jump through additional hoops to prove it isn’t.
No, it discussed comparing handwriting, which is not the same as matching signatures. the article briefly mentioned that once, but didnt cover it, most of the article is about graphology
In any case, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. didnt cover handwriting or graphology or signatures. It ruled than the new enactment of the Federal Rules of Evidence implicitly overturned the Frye standard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_v._Merrell_Dow_Pharmaceuticals,_Inc.
United States v. Saelee was closer, it covered “A forensic document analyst with the United States Postal Inspection Service National Forensic Laboratory compared “hand printing exemplars provided by defendant with the hand printing on the address labels on the packages in question.” The expert concluded that the defendant was the writer of one of the writings and probably the writer of the other. The government sought to have the expert testify to his conclusions at trial and the defendant filed a motion to exclude all of such testimony.”
But again, not signatures.
My signature varies considerably, (but usually has the same general “look”). Whatever signature I have on file must be 20 years old by now. Nonetheless, I have never had my mail in ballot rejected because the signatures didn’t match. I think they’re not too picky. Obviously, if someone who had no idea how I signed my name tried to do it, it would look quite different and presumably raise a red flag.
I think I’m going to disagree with you here.
In practice, I suspect that unless a signature is vastly different from the one on file, it isn’t closely questioned. However, if a signature is very different, that could indicate fraud. I’m talking about a situation where a person who has no idea what someone’s signature looks like fraudulently fills out a ballot and takes a stab at signing, with a hope that it looks close enough it won’t be questioned by the BOE.
Think about the difference between a bold forward scrawl compared to a meek rounded one.
I think signature comparison acts as a deterrent against people who think about stealing ballots from open mailboxes and seeing if they can get away with faking a few.
I think it also removes a talking point for those who advance the notion that vote-by-mail is vulnerable to fraud. Let’s face it: Virtually all voting schemes are vulnerable to fraud to one degree or another. But vote-by-mail, with reasonable protections in place and paper ballots for backup in case of a recount, is a pretty good way to do it – as demonstrated over many years.
Someone on this forum recently made the point that the people who conjure ways that voter fraud can happen rarely can cite examples of it actually happening. I thought it was a really important point, and likely one with which you agree.
Signature verification isn’t about positive identification, though (and certainly not to the high accuracy required by a court). It’s about flagging obvious differences to be followed up on. It doesn’t require a low false positive or false negative rate; false positives don’t matter because it’s just one of several ways of fraud detection, and false negatives don’t matter because it’s just a flag for followup and an explainable difference won’t cause any problem.
Well, at least you read the link this time, so we can dispense with the condescending Podunk links demonstrating that you didn’t bother to click the first time.
And, now you are making a distinction without a difference. Two pieces of writing can not be reliably compared. Signatures are pieces of writing. They differ from day to day. And if experts can’t determine it (and they can’t), then certainly the election official who read a handbook is not exactly going to do any better.
And this isn’t hypothetical. You know whose votes are being disproportionately invalidated by signature matches? Would you be surprised to find out that it’s minorities and the young? Would you be surprised to find out that they had their votes invalidated by people with zero training because of mismatched signatures and were not given any opportunity to correct this?
Yeah, as cited above, you are assuming this, but it isn’t what happens.
*“Not only is the disenfranchised voter given no right to participate in this process, but the voter is not even given notice that her ballot has been rejected due to a signature mismatch,” McCafferty wrote in her 49-page decision. “Moreover, moderators receive no training in handwriting analysis or signature comparison; no statute, regulation, or guidance from the state provides functional standards to distinguish the natural variations of one writer from other variations that suggest two different writers; and the moderator’s assessment is final, without any review or appeal.” *
Saucedo v. Gardner struck down the law at question in 2018.
Same thing in CA.
So, yes, in the past this occured, and could maybe occur in other states.