Judge Wants To End Georgia's Absentee Ballot Rejection For Signature Mismatch

[Gothmog]

Source: Talking Points Memo

A federal judge signaled on Wednesday that Georgia election officials would no longer be allowed to reject absentee ballots because they believe the signature on the ballot does not match the voter’s signature on public records. Instead, according to the judge’s proposed order, the ballot would be processed as a provisional ballot, and election officials would be required to give the voter notice of the perceived discrepancy, and give the voter — no later than three days before election day — the opportunity to address it.

Likewise, the judge proposed that that applications for absentee ballots, where the election officials believe the signature does not match their records, no longer be rejected, and instead, that voters be provided with a provisional ballots. Those voters too will be be given the opportunity to rectify the signature discrepancy, according to the judge’s order.

U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May’s gave the parties in the case until noon Thursday to give her feedback on the proposed order.

“The Court is specifically interested in comments as to whether any of the below language is confusing or will be unworkable for the implementing officials,” she said.

Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/judge-wants-to-end-georgias-absentee-ballot-rejection-for-signature-mismatch

[Gothmog]

1. From Marc Elias

Link to tweet

[George II]

2. We have what they call "same day registration" here in CT. A person can go...

...to Town Hall ON ELECTION DAY and register, then vote. The ballot is put aside temporarily until the person can be verified. So, the person, whether qualified or not, can at least vote, and then the validity of the registration can be confirmed afterward.

I don't know why every state doesn't do that.

We also have online registration and mail-in registration.

[Hoyt]

3. Will be interesting to see what KKKemp does. I'm sure trump will criticize judge.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. Good!

Hopefully this will help keep other states from adopting this crap.

[diva77]

5. Unless the elections officials are ordered to count the provisional ballots as well, this does not

appear to be a satisfactory solution. How many people will take action in time if they receive notification 3 days prior to the election? What other obstacles will they encounter? What if the mail fails to deliver their corrected/matching signature documents in time?

I don't applaud this solution at all unless people's votes are counted.

[MiniMe]

7. At least people are notified this way

And they have a chance to remedy it. It still requires way too much effort to vote, but I'd rather people get notified that their ballot was rejected. Before this order, you would have no idea

[diva77]

9. True it's better than nothing but it's very far from being good enough; just a poor band-aid measure

[BlueIdaho]

6. Kemp should be jailed for violating citizens voting rights.

We need the voting rights act returned to full force. Events have shown the Supreme Court’s judgement to be a complete and total misread of the racism that still exists in America today.

[hughee99]

8. This seems to be a somewhat reasonable solution, given that there is at least an opportunity to have

the vote counted. Giving voters more time to rectify the situation would be better, but they'd still be constrained by a need to certify the vote, so they can't stretch this out for weeks. The alternatives are to do nothing (which isn't a good idea), or to just do away with signing absentee votes at all (which I don't think would be acceptable either).

[backtoblue]

10. I early voted today and actually hesitated when I signed.

I usually only sign with my first name letter and last name. Sometimes I've signed my entire name. The lady at the counter assured me it wouldn't matter.