Federal Judge Strikes Down N.H.'s 'Signature Mismatch' Absentee Voting Law
A federal judge has struck down a New hampshire law that allows pollworkers to toss out absentee ballots if they don’t believe the signature adequately matches the one used on other voting paperwork.
In a ruling issued Tuesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Landya McCafferty said “the current process for rejecting voters due to a signature mismatch fails to guarantee basic fairness,” because it gives moderators “sole, unreviewable discretion” to discard absentee ballots.
"It cannot be emphasized enough that the consequence of a moderator’s decision — disenfranchisement — is irremediable," Judge McCafferty wrote.
McCafferty also raised concerns about a lack of standards, training and oversight offered to pollworkers who are tasked with deciding whether to throw out someone’s ballot. Her ruling noted that the Secretary of State’s office “does not regularly monitor rates of rejection due to signature mismatch to ensure moderators’ compliance with the statute” and “has never engaged in a review of statistical anomalies related to the requirement.”
Read more: http://www.nhpr.org/post/federal-judge-strikes-down-nhs-signature-mismatch-absentee-voting-law
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Every time I'm required to sign on a digital screen, like for a credit card purchase, my standard comment is "That's not my signature." And it truly doesn't look like anything I would have written with a pen. But the store clerk doesn't care because they witnessed me signing it, so there's no question that it's mine.
For my driver's license I tried to sign the digital screen 5 or 6 times and it never looked like my real signature. Finally I gave up and accepted the 6th try, and now that is on my permanent ID. I can never show my license for ID because the signature doesn't even look like my real signature.
And what about when there's no witness, like when someone is mailing their absentee ballot? I completely agree that ballots shouldn't be thrown out by pollworkers who don't have the proper training. If they tried to match my ballot signature to my driver's license, it would never match and my ballot would be one of the discarded ones.
