Court rules no early notification needed if mail ballots are rejected
Texas elections officials willnot have to notify voters when their ballots are rejected over a signature mismatch, a federal appellate court ruled Monday.
Voters are requiredto sign their mail ballot envelope, and a committee of local election officials uses that signature to verify the voter’s identity by checking it against either an application for a mail ballot or a county’s database of voter signatures.
However, issues can arise when voters’ names change or their signature differs from those in the database.
The law does not require officials to notify voters of rejections until 10 days after an election, which is too late for a voter to prove the ballot’s legitimacy.
It also does not provide uniform standards for reviewing ballot signatures, meaning each county comes up with its own procedure, something plaintiffs challenging the procedure had criticized as “idiosyncratic, arbi
trary, and ad hoc.”
More than 5,000 Texas voters had their ballots rejected because of perceived signature mismatches during the 2016 and 2018 elections combined, according to the lawsuit.
A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling Monday — after more than 4 million Texans already had voted — finding the state has established that Texas’s signature-verification procedures are constitutional and necessary to prevent voter fraud.
The panel was composed of Judges Patrick Higginbotham, Jerry Smith and Andrew Oldham. All three were appointed by Republican presidents.
The judges set aside a U.S. district judge’s ruling that would have required local officials to notify voters about ballots they disqualified based on signature mismatch, as well as give them a chance to resolve the issue and have their votes counted.
The lower court ruling already was subject to an administrative stay but now will remain on hold for the duration of the appeals process, all but guaranteeing no changes will occur before voting ends Nov. 3.
“Because Texas’ strong interest in safeguarding the integrity of its elections from voter fraud far outweighs any burden the state’s voting procedures place on the right to vote, we stay the injunction pending appeal,” the ruling issued by Smith states.
A district judge last month had called the law unconsitutional and ordered the state to tell counties they either had to stop rejecting ballots for signature mis matches under the current law or require them to notify voters of rejection sand allow them to appeal—at least until the state Legislature can clarify the law.
“At this point in the election, at this point in a pandemic, the court's decision to prevent a fix to our mail-in ballot system from being implemented is deeply troubling,” said Hani Mirza, senior attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, which is litigating the case. “As expected, the state has fought tooth and nail to maintain the error-prone signature comparison procedure, which leads to the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters every major election, rather than protect the rights of voters.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the district judge’s order amounted to “rewriting Texas election lawon the eve of an election” and applauded the appellate court decision.
“I will continue to defend the integrity of Texas elections and combat voter fraud,” Paxton said in a statement.
Mirza said his organization will continue to fight in court but in the meantime is urging county ballot boards to still give notice as soon as possible of any rejection, regardless of the court ruling, “because you are closest to the voter, and voters need their counties' help.”
He added that voters can call their county early voting clerk if their vote is rejected for this reason and ask what options are available to them, such as voting in-person or asking their county to contest the decision in court. Voters also can call the nonpartisan Election Protection Hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE.
The Fifth Circuit panel said Monday that the process does not violate Fourteenth Amendment due process rights by not allowing voters to appeal rejections because it does not limit anyone’s right to “life, liberty or property,” saying that state-created liberty interests are generally limited to freedom from bodily restraint.
While several district courts have ruled that the right to vote should come with due process protection, the Fifth Circuit said there's no circuit court precedent for that interpretation.