More than a month after voting by mail in the presidential election, South Los Angeles resident Taylor Johnson has lost her vote after election officials took issue with the way she signed her name on the ballot envelope. I learned that I couldn’t count.
Election officials told Johnson that the signature on the ballot did not match another signature on file. Johnson didn’t know which signature it was, but she knew it would look different. After years of printing my name, it was only a few months ago that I perfected my cursive signature.
“Most people my age just doodle,” said Johnson, 20, who works as an administrative assistant at a medical imaging clinic.
For young Americans, who rarely sign anything other than a paper receipt or a coffee shop iPad, paper signatures no longer mean much — except in the case of mail-in ballots, whether or not their mail-in votes are counted. It’s different if the signature is important to determine.
In California, voters under 25 made up 10% of the November electorate, but nearly 3 in 10 ballots were secured due to signature issues, according to an analysis by voter data firm Political Data. It had been. Ballots with signature issues came from voters under 35 years of age.
California typically verifies identity through mail-in voters’ signatures. Up to three election workers will review each ballot envelope to ensure the signature matches the voter’s registration document or driver’s license, and will retain envelopes with missing or mismatched signatures. I’ll keep it.
Election officials are required to notify those voters and give them an opportunity to correct the error.
In the November election, nearly 200,000 ballots were flagged as signature issues across California’s 58 counties. Nearly 6 in 10 votes were ultimately counted through a process known as “curing,” where voters can fill out a form to certify that the defective ballot was theirs, but more than 83,000 people were counted. were not aggregated.
In a survey of voters whose ballots were flagged for signature issues, 40% of respondents said their signature looked different than before, and another 40% said, “Using a sloppy, incomplete, or casual signature when signing.” 12% said they completely forgot to sign the envelope.
“When you’re dealing with a state with 22 million voters and 16 million people sending in their ballots with their signatures, there’s a lot of potential for little nonsense to cause problems,” said PDI Vice President Paul.・Mr. Mitchell says. We conducted a survey.
Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page recommended that voters check their driver’s license signature before signing their ballot and consider sending in a new registration form if their signature changes. He said Orange County plans to send forms to 12,000 voters in hopes of getting new signatures on file.
“We know that signatures change over time,” Page says. “And we know that the way people sign their fingers on a little pad at the DMV is not how they actually sign their name.”
Mitchell’s analysis found that in the state’s six most competitive congressional races, 85% of Republicans and Democrats whose ballots were flagged with signature issues were able to repair their ballots and count them. This was 25 points higher than the state average.
Republicans and Democrats led armies of volunteers and staffers going door-to-door in the most competitive U.S. House districts.
In the Central Valley, where Democrat Adam Gray narrowly defeated Republican Rep. John Duarte, the number of votes between Democrats and Republicans far exceeded the 187-vote difference in the race.
Campaign volunteers and workers went door-to-door in precincts, talking directly to voters, explaining how to fill out their ballots, and in some cases helping them scan, print and return ballots. .
Mitchell found that voters with no party affiliation had much lower returns than voters affiliated with Republicans or Democrats in battleground districts, suggesting that each party focuses first on its most loyal voters. suggested.
In less competitive districts, voters were more independent.
Cassidy Crotwell, 22, registered to vote during her fourth-grade economics class at El Toro High School in Orange County. Everyone in the class had registered on their phones, she said, but she hadn’t signed anything.
Crotwell learned of the problem with her signature on her November ballot through a text message from the Orange County Registrar’s Office. Republican Rep. Young Kim, who represents her congressional district, easily won reelection, but neither party came up with any meaningful policies in the district. No other groups or campaigns contacted Crotwell, she said.
She thought the elections office had her signature on file when she got her driver’s license at age 16, but her signature is “a little more distinct now,” she said. He says this is the result of signing many documents for his job in human resources. Paper work. She was unable to amend her ballot, but plans to update her signature the next time she goes to the DMV.
Johnson, a South Los Angeles voter, also did not amend his ballot. By the time he learned his vote had not been counted, it was several weeks after the presidential election ended.
Johnson said no signatures will be required in the 2026 midterm elections and he plans to vote in person.
