People’s signatures often vary from document to document, and can change throughout the course of their lives, typically with little consequence. But it’s caused a larger issue for U.S. election results in Nevada, where nearly 13,000 mail-in ballots are still being held, due to voter signatures not matching those on file.
The reasons for the mismatches varied, state secretary Francisco Aguilar said in a statement — some older voters’ signatures change naturally over time, while some younger people may not have developed a signature yet. One big issue: Some signatures are inputted digitally with a stylus, which can distort them.
The outcome in Nevada has yet to be determined, though Donald Trump has won the U.S. election, ahead of Democrat Kamala Harris. However, for many voters and advocates, the signature requirement is outdated, and they believe it will become a bigger issue in the future.
“I had to enter my signature four times before they allowed me to vote,” one user wrote on Reddit.
“My signature is never consistent, which is why I went back to early voting in person,” another Reddit user said.
Debra Cleaver, who founded the political engagement organization VoteAmerica, says signature matching should be a thing of the past.
“Handwriting or signature matching is junk science,” Cleaver told CBC News. “You would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the United States under 40 who even has a signature because they don’t know cursive.
“The people who are doing handwriting analysis right now at the county [election’s] office … are they certified handwriting analysis experts?”
Flaws in the system, users say
Election workers in Nevada manually check to ensure the signature on a mail-in ballot envelope matches the one in the database. If they feel it doesn’t, they put the ballot aside into a rejected pile, triggering a process called curing, where the voter is notified and can correct the issue. Voters in Nevada have until Nov. 12 to fix the mistake.
As of Wednesday morning, over 26,000 ballots in the state had been held in total using this process, according to the state secretary’s office, over half of which were successfully “cured.” Almost 13,000 are still awaiting verification.
Residents took to social media to sound the alarm about the system, which they found difficult.
“I have very nice, eligible handwriting and I do try to do the exact same handwriting electronically, but it always looks nothing like my regular signature,” one account user on X wrote.
“Nobody’s signature on a digital pad looks like their actual handwritten signature…. Clearly there are flaws in this system that need to be addressed, and soon,” another X user wrote.
CBC News reached out to the public information officer for the secretary of state but did not get a response in time for publication.
Of those who voted in Nevada, nearly 40 per cent — or over 500,000 people — cast their ballots by mail, according to the state election website.
Difficult to maintain consistency with signatures
Sheila Lowe, president of the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation, said it is difficult for people to maintain consistency with their electronic and written signatures when they’re required to switch back and forth for different documents.
“Whatever signature you choose, you’ve got to make it consistent. But the fact is some people have a whole bunch of different signatures,” Lowe told CBC News Wednesday.
“I had one person who had six different signatures for different things.”
Lowe, who is also a court-qualified forensic document examiner, said electronic signature matching remains just one metric to help authenticate an individual’s documents.
“Whenever a client presents me with a bunch of signatures to compare to another signature to determine whether it’s authentic or not, I’ve barely even looked at the driver’s licence because it’s just a very poor representation, so that is problematic,” she said.
Cleaver, who is based in San Francisco, said she first noticed the issue in 2014, and predicted it would soon turn into a larger problem. Instead of signatures, she said, voters should be required to provide a different form of authentication, like a driver’s licence number or passport number, or a combination of a partial social security number with a date of birth.
She said she expects there to be a “disproportionate percentage” of ballots cast by young people that are rejected as a result.
‘I hope we find a better way’
Voters in other states took issue with the signature requirement, as well.
“If that’s true, another reason for me to be sad [is] that people don’t know how to sign their names consistently,” Philadelphia resident John Ventre told CBC News Wednesday.
“I hope we find a better way, then, for people to show up and vote if it only requires a signature.… It’s disappointing.”
Another Philadelphia resident questioned why the method still exists.
“That’s dumb. Because it’s like, if I’m trying to vote, which you guys say is necessary, why should a signature be stopping me from voting?” Suhay Luhbay told CBC News.
“Why can’t they just print their name? That would be easier, especially because they’re young. They probably don’t know how to do signatures.”
Cleaver is pushing for a change in the verification methods to solve the issue.
“We’ve had over three per cent rejection rate for years in California on ballots because signatures don’t match,” she said.
“Millions of people are voting in California. We have very friendly voting policies, but that’s just another burden on a voter who is already jumped through so many hoops to register and receive their ballot.”
Election officials in Milwaukee say a sealing issue on more than a dozen vote tabulation machines led to a recount of tens of thousands of votes in the battleground state of Wisconsin, out of an abundance of caution.
