The 5th Circuit reinstated Texas' process for rejecting absentee ballots with signature match issues

[soothsayer]

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Daniel Jacobson
@Dan_F_Jacobson
This is a stunning opinion. The court holds that voters have *no due process rights at all* when their ballots are rejected, and therefore voters don't need to be given a chance to cure alleged signature mismatches. Their mail ballots can just be tossed out.

Zoe Tillman
@ZoeTillman
New: The 5th Circuit reinstated Texas' process for rejecting absentee ballots with signature match issues — the panel halted an injunction that would have stopped ballots from being tossed unless officials adopted a more robust notice/cure process https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7245123/10-19-20-Richardson-v-Texas-5th-Circuit-Opinion.pdf

[SharonClark]

1. That's criminal, signatures can change over time.

Thankfully, they don't do signature matching in Iowa or my ballot would likely have been tossed. In my county, if people forget to sign the outer envelope, they are contacted and told they can come to the Election Office and sign it.

[vercetti2021]

2. And this is why I'm not voting with my ballot now

I do not trust these fucking assholes

[unblock]

3. Idiotic "logic". Guaranteed disenfranchisement for many for the possible avoidance of a tiny fraud

Better to take away the vote of hundreds of thousands who may have ever-so-slightly shifting signatures than to allow one or two fraudulently signed ballots, according to these *ssholes.

[Retrograde]

4. They want to reject as many as possible

By comparison, this is what my county does (Santa Clara, CA) - from a recent interview in the local on-line paper with the county registrar:

"The voter's authenticity is determined by the signature on the back of the envelope. That envelope, when received at the Registrar of Voters, is scanned by a machine to capture the signature digitally. That signature is compared with one or more of your signatures that the elections office has on file, drawn from your voter registration card and from documents you've submitted to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The sorting machine kicks out each ballot with a signature that doesn't match. Next, staff review the ballot signature side by side with the signatures on file. They look for common handwriting traits, such as the slant of the writing and the letters' ascenders and descenders. If the authenticity is still in doubt, the ballot is sent for review by management staff. Voters whose ballots cannot be confirmed as authentic will receive a mailed notification letter and will have until Dec. 1 to provide a signature that matches the file signature.

In the November 2018 election, 820 letters were sent to Santa Clara County voters because of mismatched signatures; 617 voters responded satisfactorily, ensuring that 75.2% of those questionable ballots were counted, according to a county election office report. (About 487,000 vote-by-mail ballots were cast during that election.)"

Hmmmm, transparent election procedures and encouraging more people to vote - I wonder if this has anything to do with the continued decline of the GOP here?

[Crunchy Frog]

5. Roust new voting rights legislation, with standardization for procedures for national elections...

needs to be a MAJOR part of President Biden's agenda.

[Boogiemack]

6. Is there a way for the voters to know if their ballot was tossed?

If so, they should just try to get a new one now or vote in person.