“I truly believe that my voice is heard through my vote,” Weisfeld said. In Sacramento County, the county’s lead election official this week said typically 10 percent of mail-in or drop-box ballots are flagged initially as unverifiable by an automated signature recognition system that does the first hand-writing analysis. Laura J. Nelson is a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, covering transportation and mobility. Section 6 Provide any information that may assist your election official in accepting this form. • Have a witness sign and provide address. Any ballot would have to be returned by Tuesday in order to be counted, under current law. Election day is Nov. 3, but ballots already are in most California voters’ mailboxes and can be returned as of this week. Here’s what else you need to know about signing your mail-in ballot. “All it would have taken is a quick phone call to me.”. Sitting down, standing up or resting her arm on a chair can change the look of her writing — all of which she would have told elections officials, she said, had they asked. In some populous areas, like Los Angeles County and Clark County, Nev., a computer program takes the first pass at ballots, scanning for possible handwriting mismatches. The comparison signature could be a person’s driver license signature, or their initial registration application, or any of a handful of other documents over time that voters sign and that are on file, including more recent ballot votes, or the change of address form the voter may have filled out the last time they moved. South Carolina Democrats filed a lawsuit against state election officials over the witness signature requirement, which state legislators voted to require earlier this year during efforts to allow no-excuse absentee voting in the state. When performed by professionals in criminal cases or legal proceedings, signature verification can take hours. Marking a selection improperly -- for example, putting an X through a bubble instead of filling it in -- could result in your ballot being rejected. The Secretary of State has a ballot-tracking system as well that voters can sign up for: wheresmyballot.sos.ca.gov. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. The only thing left unsaid is obvious: Absent substantial changes, Newsom’s “Safe Schools for All” plan won’t be ratified by the California Legislature. Signatures that don’t match do not always signal fraud. North Carolina reduced the number of witnesses it requires from two to one. No. Vastrick suggests multiple layers of review, including a check by a supervisor with more training and an inspection by a bipartisan panel of elected officials or outside experts. To obtain a signature while practicing social distancing, a witness can watch a voter fill out their ballot while watching through a window, open … “It is just ripe for error,” said Linton Mohammed, a forensic document examiner in California who has been an expert witness in lawsuits over ballot signature rules. If vote margins are close, the verification signature process could become the “hanging chad” of the election, experts say, as differences in how counties handle the process could open the door to legal challenges. Only election workers who have been trained and passed a test are allowed to verify signatures, Rodriguez said. Her hands sometimes go numb and she struggles to grip a pen. To ensure your absentee by mail ballot counts, voters must do the following: • Sign the voter’s oath on the ballot return envelope. Those who sign up for BallotTrax will be informed when the county has received the ballot and when it has been accepted, she said. “You do not have to have a witness in order to sign your ballot,” Haynes said. Some states provide a “secrecy” envelope for the ballot, which goes inside the carrier envelope that you send to the elections office. A ballot signature that doesn’t match the one on the registration file, like the ones above, can lead to votes being thrown out or contested. A lack of a witness signature or other witness information has emerged as the leading cause of ballots being set aside before being counted in North Carolina, with problems disproportionately affecting Black voters in the state, according to an Associated Press analysis of state election data. With record numbers of people voting by mail this cycle, ballots thrown out for signature problems and other issues have the potential to decide races where the margin of victory is slim. A U.S. lottery jackpot is $1 billion for the third time. Any other person can be a witness. “We are all just office workers trying to get stuff done in here.”. Maya Lau is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Use an official drop box, take your ballot to an election office center or deposit your ballot at a vote center, if there’s one in your area. But a series of court rulings have held almost unanimously that discarding a vote without notice is a violation of a voter’s due process rights. The election worker compares the signatures and makes a decision in as little as five seconds. Like every other ballot… Election workers move around the ballot sorting room at the San Diego Registrar of Voters this month. People eager to get the COVID-19 vaccine ahead of schedule have flocked to some L.A. clinics, spending hours in an unofficial standby line for doses left over at the end of the day. 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