Black Voters Hit Harder By Mail Ballot Rejections In Washington State

[appalachiablue]

- Daily Kos, Feb. 3, 2022.

Recent voter suppression laws in Georgia and Texas have directly and intentionally targeted groups of voters thought by Republicans to be likely to vote for Democrats, seeking to make it harder for them to vote. Voting by mail has been one of the big things Republicans are making more difficult. But a recent audit in Washington state shows that even where voting by mail is the standard, fully supported by state government, the ways it’s overseen can have racially disparate impacts.

Black voters were four times more likely to have their ballots rejected than white voters, the audit found, with one out of 40 Black voters’ votes being thrown out. Signature matching between the ballots and voter signatures on file was the reason for the rejections, whether because signatures were missing altogether or didn’t appear to match. Auditors examined the signature matches and generally agreed that the signatures on the rejected ballots didn’t match—but that still leaves a troubling disparity.

Black voters weren’t the only ones rejected at higher rates. Men, younger voters, and less-experienced voters also saw increased rates of rejection.

“It’s not acceptable, quite frankly,” said State Auditor Pat McCarthy, a Democrat. Her office conducted the audit—and McCarthy said that she herself once had a ballot rejected because of a signature match issue, between a document on which she had signed her full name, including initial, and one on which she’d signed a shortened version of her first name. Probably a lot of us can imagine doing that.

And again, this is in a state where the people in charge are not trying to throw out as many votes as possible. This is also not the first time such disparities have been uncovered. “Researchers examining mail-in votes from the 2018 election in Georgia found that racial and ethnic minorities were more likely to have their on-time ballot rejected compared with white voters,” The New York Times reports. “Similar disparities were found during the 2018 election in Florida by researchers working with the American Civil Liberties Union, a review that also found disparities for younger voters, first-time voters and military personnel. Journalists have found similar trends in North Carolina and Colorado — and previously in Washington State.”...

More, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/2/3/2078386/-Black-voters-hit-harder-by-mail-ballot-rejections-in-Washington-state

[TDale313]

1. Raise your hand if you're surprised.

Anyone?

[appalachiablue]

2. Busy, aren't they? Whittling away at voter registration

and obstruction for upcoming elections.