State mulls relaxing rules about ballot signatures
California’s state Legislature is considering making it more difficult for local election officials to disqualify ballots.
>> California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature is considering whether to make it more difficult for local election officials to reject ballots because a voter’s signature doesn’t exactly match what’s on file.
Voters who cast ballots by mail must now sign their ballot. Election officials then compare that signature to the one in the voter’s registration file. Election officials can disqualify ballots if the signatures don’t match.
But comparing signatures can be tricky because people don’t always sign their name the same way. It’s a bigger issue after the November election, when more than 86% of votes in California were vote-bymail ballots.
The secretary of state’s office issued temporary rules for the November election presuming a voter’s signature was legitimate, making an exact match unnecessary. To reject a ballot, election officials had to believe “beyond a reasonable doubt” that signatures didn’t match.
Those rules are set to expire in July. A bill before the California Legislature would make them permanent.
Any proposed changes to election laws this year will get more attention because Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is likely to face a recall election. The Legislature has already passed — and Newsom signed — a law saying counties must mail ballots to all active registered voters for any election called in 2021.
That means a potential recall election could be dominated by vote-by-mail ballots in the state where nearly twice as many voters are registered as Democrats than Republicans.
But if the bill involving signatures becomes law, it would not take effect until Jan. 1, 2022, meaning it wouldn’t be in place for a possible recall election later this year. However, the secretary of state’s office could simply extend its temporary rules to include a recall election.
No one mentioned the recall during a public hearing Monday on the proposal. State Sen. Josh Becker, the bill’s author and a Democrat from Menlo Park, said it will make permanent “what we know works from November 2020.”