Counties in Pennsylvania were directed not to discard mail-in ballots where signatures don’t match ones in a voter’s file.
“As a result of this case, Pennsylvania voters can cast their vote without fear that their ballot could be rejected solely because an election official — who isn’t trained in handwriting analysis — thinks their signatures don’t match. Voting should not be a penmanship test,“ said Mark Gaber, director of trial litigation at the Campaign Legal Center, in a statement.
Pennsylvania’s Department of State issued the directive on Monday, prompting organizations such as the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh, which were represented by the CLC, to drop a federal lawsuit on the state’s lack of guidance on the issue.
In Pennsylvania’s June primary, 26,000 out of 1.5 million ballots were rejected for issues such as “signature-related errors or matters of penmanship.”
Lawrence County election director, L. Edward Allison Jr., said the directive is a smart step as signatures are prone to change, especially as voters age.
“We recognize the fact that, as people age, their signature changes, I know mine has,” Allison said in an interview. “Different medical conditions, strokes, all that kind of stuff enters into it.”
The news comes as the battleground state anticipates about 3 million people to vote by mail for November’s election due to the state expanding the voting method last year and coronavirus concerns. So far, about 1.9 million people have applied for a mail-in or absentee ballot, according to a state official.
Voting by mail has sparked a fiery debate, with President Trump and his allies saying voting by mail opens the election to voter fraud.
“Mail ballots, they cheat,” Trump said in August. “Mail ballots are very dangerous for this country because of cheaters. They go collect them. They are fraudulent in many cases. They have to vote. They should have voter ID, by the way.”
