Will your California ballot be rejected if your signature doesn’t match? Here’s what to know
As voters begin mailing in their election ballots or putting them in a ballot drop box, some are expressing a new fear: Will my ballot be rejected if my signature isn’t quite the same as vote officials have on file?
The concern may be especially high among older voters whose signature may be shakier than in previous years.
In Sacramento County, the county’s lead election official this week said typically 10 percent of mail-in or drop-box ballots are flagged initially as unverifiable by an automated signature recognition system that does the first hand-writing analysis.
Those ballots are then reviewed by elections officials, some of whom have had FBI training on how to match signatures, Sacramento County Registrar of Voters Courtney Bailey-Kanelos said. After reviews by staffers, the top county elections official makes a final decision.
Bailey-Kanelos said typically, at the end of that process, 1% or fewer of ballots are rejected on the basis of mismatched signatures.
The comparison signature could be a person’s driver license signature, or their initial registration application, or any of a handful of other documents over time that voters sign and that are on file, including more recent ballot votes, or the change of address form the voter may have filled out the last time they moved.
The machine recognizes a signature as similar, Bailey-Kanelos told county supervisors this week, whether it is signed, for instance, Susan Peters, Sue Peters, or S. Peters, or with or without a middle initial or middle name.
Instead, the analysis focuses on the slant of the writing, the size of the letters and the pen pressure level, she said.
“It is a comparison, not an exact match,” she said.
If a signature is rejected, the voter will be notified by mail, and possibly even by phone or email, if county officials have that information on file, Bailey-Kanelos said. The same goes if the voter forgets to sign their ballot.
“In addition, if you sign up for BallotTrax, you will get a notification as well,” Bailey-Kanelos said.
Those who sign up for BallotTrax will be informed when the county has received the ballot and when it has been accepted, she said.
Election day is Nov. 3, but ballots already are in most California voters’ mailboxes and can be returned as of this week.
To vote by mail, voters can place the ballot in a mailbox or one of 71 special ballot drop boxes at various locations in Sacramento County, similar to drop boxes in other counties.
Ballots must be postmarked by Nov. 3, according to the Secretary of State office, or can be dropped off at any Postal Service outlet that is still open and accepting ballots on Nov. 3, or to any county vote center, prior to 8 p.m. on Nov. 3.
The Secretary of State has a ballot-tracking system as well that voters can sign up for: wheresmyballot.sos.ca.gov
This story was originally published October 9, 2020 at 10:17 AM with the headline "Will your California ballot be rejected if your signature doesn’t match? Here’s what to know."