Lake County readies for 50K absentee ballots, official says
About 15,000 Lake County voters have requested absentee ballots, a figure an election official said is expected to grow to record levels.
Director Michelle Fajman said the county already has 15,000 requests for absentee ballots and is on pace for about 50,000 requests — the most ever — for the November General Election.
In preparation for November, the Lake County Board of Elections is putting steps in place to notify voters if their absentee ballot is rejected because the signature does not match and allowing affected voters the opportunity to affirm their signature.
The move, discussed at a meeting Tuesday in Crown Point, is in answer to a federal court ruling that permanently enjoined Indiana and other states from rejecting mail-in ballots on the basis of a signature mismatch without providing adequate notice to the voter.
The Indiana Secretary of State has asked counties to find a way to provide notice to voters whose ballots have been rejected due to signature mismatch in an effort to comply with the August finding by Senior Judge Sarah Evans Barker of the Southern Indiana District Court who said voters must be notified.
Barker found the procedure the state uses to verify signatures on mail-in ballots violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment because it does not provide an adequate opportunity for a voter to affirm their signature and have their vote counted.
Under Indiana law, an absentee ballot will be rejected if a county election board determines the voter’s signature is not genuine. The board is required to issue a certificate allowing the voter to vote in-person, but only if the voter appears in person before the board not later than 5 p.m. on Election Day. Barker took issue with the requirement a voter must appear before the election board.
Barker found the current state law, while with merit, does not provide an adequate opportunity for a voter to have their ballot count if election board officials deem the signatures are a mismatch.
Fajman said absentee ballots will be reviewed by a bipartisan team when they are received. If a discrepancy is found, the voter will be notified by phone or email and then by mail in order to have a chance to affirm the signature. Absentee ballots that are rejected will be processed as provisional ballots.
James Wieser, who served as proxy for election board president Kevin Smith, lauded the efforts by the department to come up with a plan but cautioned things ay still change prior to Nov. 3 as the ramifications of the ruling are fully understood.
Board member Dana Dumezich said voters should know absentee ballots are not rejected lightly for mismatched signatures.
“It’s not like we reject, reject, reject, but signatures do change,” Dumezich said, adding the bipartisan team works had to be fair and accurate when verifying signatures on absentee ballots.