How are ballot signatures verified?
By Saturday afternoon, counties across Arizona had yet to finish counting mail-in ballots that county recorders received by Election Day.
The Arizona Republic projected late Saturday there were more than 260,000 ballots left to be counted statewide, with an estimated 198,000 coming from Maricopa County.
After Arizona Republicans filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes and other county recorders over inconsistent procedures between counties for how they verify signatures on mail-in ballots that are dropped off at the polls by Election Day, focus had shifted to the “curing” process where voters confirm their ballots.
When counties receive a ballot with a signature that does not match the voter’s signature on record, the county will attempt to contact the voter to confirm their ballot in a process called “curing.”
Maricopa County had continued to allow voters to verify their signatures on ballots after Election Day while some other counties stopped as the polls closed in their counties.
As part of a settlement between the county recorders and local Republicans, all counties are required to continue checking signatures until 5 p.m. Nov. 14.
Fontes said during the process of verifying signatures, the county will attempt to contact the voter using the phone number and email on file with the voter’s registration.
He said the county will call multiple times, leave the voter a voicemail if their voicemail box is set up, and send an email in an attempt to get in contact with the voter.
While county officials try to verify the signature on the green envelopes that contain a voter’s ballot, they occasionally come across an envelope with no signature at all.
Fontes said when there is no signature on the envelope, the county will have to consider that ballot deficient, and the county will not go through the “curing” process for that ballot.
“Unlike going to vote in person and we work to confirm their identity, these ballots aren’t considered tied to an individual,” Fontes said of those ballots missing a signature. “They’re essentially just a ballot in an envelope and not tied to a voter.”
As of Saturday afternoon, Fontes said there were less than 4,000 ballots that his office has received that have not yet been cured.
Fontes said the number of ballots that have signature issues are very small as a proportion to the total number of mail-in ballots received.
Fontes said the overwhelming majority of ballots received will have the signature on the envelope verified.
If a voter wants to see if their ballot was counted, they can check the status of their Early Voting ballot on the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office website.