Rejected
Elections supervisors in Washington state’s King County review mailed-in ballots. Photo courtesy by Matt M. McKnight/Crosscut.
Last fall, mail-in ballots from Latino voters in some counties in Washington state were more likely to be rejected by election officials. An investigation reveals how bias may be subjecting Latino ballots to greater scrutiny
Editor’s note: This story was produced for palabra from a comprehensive project by InvestigateWest, a nonprofit news organization based in Seattle and focused on the environment, public health, and government and corporate accountability throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Read “Block The Vote,” palabra’s story about legislative efforts in several states to limit voting.
Marissa Reyes doesn’t understand how her signature prompted officials in Washington state’s Benton County to toss out her mailed-in ballot in an August 2020 primary election.
A letter from the county elections office challenging her signature came to her house in her hometown of Prosser. But Reyes had left for New York, where she had just finished college. Confused by the challenge, Reyes and her parents ran out of time to resolve the issue. Her ballot was officially rejected.
“I definitely felt annoyed and a little apathetic, but definitely not surprised,” Reyes recalled.
In the November 2020 election, ballots of nearly 24,000 registered Washington voters were not counted because officials judged the signatures did not match the voter’s signature on file, on official documents like their driver’s license.
And in the eight Washington counties with the largest share of potential Latino voters, signature mismatches were nearly four times more likely to be flagged than those on ballots from other voters, according to an InvestigateWest analysis of four recent elections.
Latinos make up 37% of the total population in these eight counties, and 21% of the voting population. White, non-Hispanic voters make up most of the remaining voting population in these counties. While the eight counties account for 10% of the statewide voting population, they represent 29% of the Latino voting population in Washington.
Experts and voters themselves have suggested a variety of explanations for signature rejections among Latino voters, including language barriers, education levels and implicit bias.
The disenfranchisement of Latino voters could mean altered election outcomes.
Marissa Reyes’ signature on her ballot was challenged in August 2020. In Washington state counties with the highest proportions of Latino voters, voters like Reyes with Latino-sounding last names are four times more likely to have their ballots rejected because of a signature challenge. Photo by Dan DeLong/InvestigateWest
“There needs to be more accountability so that these biases don’t permeate our building blocks of democracy,” said Reyes, who was born and raised in Prosser.
Reyes described the culture in her hometown as racist and xenophobic.
She said she remembers young people driving around town in trucks with Confederate flags on Cinco de Mayo, an important day for the Mexican-American community. Some of those kids, she added, probably grew up and went on to work in local schools and government.
“I’m not surprised that Latin-American sounding names are thrown by the wayside,” Reyes said about InvestigateWest’s analysis. She doesn’t believe her signature should be suspect. Like other kids in her Benton County school, she learned cursive long ago, and her parents even helped her practice at home.
Nationwide challenges to voting
As states nationwide consider election rules that many see as assaults on voting rights, Reyes’ experience provided a window to a nationwide problem with the widespread use of signature matching to validate mailed-in ballots, commonly known as VBM.
Most states expanded access to absentee voting in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 46% of voters mailed in ballots in the general election – a huge increase from 2016. Intended as a convenience, the absentee verification process actually poses potential barriers to voting successfully, particularly for people of color.
The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, a national non-profit organization, filed multiple lawsuits in 2020 related to signature matching.
Ezra Rosenberg, co-director of the committee’s Voting Rights Project, said of the processes: “Signature matching is a notoriously unreliable science. There are real problems with particular populations. Studies have shown that it's true for people for whom English is not their first language, particularly not English script; young people, whose handwriting and signature have not evolved into later form; and older people, whose signatures have just changed. It’s not a solid basis to reject a vote, particularly when one, the election officials are not trained, and two, they are not providing the voter with notice and opportunity to cure.”
Washington state provides voters with notice of a challenge and the opportunity to fix, or “cure” a ballot up until the day before the election is certified. But there are many variables, for example: time to certify varies by type of election; people can vote at least two weeks before election day; and in a high turnout election, a last-minute voter might receive the mailed challenge notice several days post-election.
After InvestigateWest published its findings, the Voting Rights Project of the Latino Politics and Policy Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles filed a federal lawsuit against three Washington counties, challenging the signature matching provisions and processes.
“Washington state is not an outlier in having a signature matching provision,” said Sonni Waknin of the Voting Rights Project. “It’s not abnormal to have this kind of verification, but there is so much leeway in who is doing it and how they are doing it, how well-trained they are, and what their biases are.”
In Colorado, the two counties with the highest share of residents identified as Latino had some of the highest VBM rejection rates in the state in the 2016 and 2018 general elections.
In Florida, Latino, Black and other voters of color were twice as likely as white voters to have their VBM ballot rejected in the 2020 primary and 60% more likely to have VBM ballots initially rejected in the 2020 general election.
And in New York City, the Campaign Legal Center found VBM ballot rejection rates were higher in areas with more communities of color, relative to whiter areas upstate.
A flurry of state voting laws enacted in the first half of 2021 could amplify existing VBM disparities unless there is extensive voter education or new federal laws.
“Every voter should have an equal right to their mail ballot being counted, however we know well that Latinos are more likely to have their ballots rejected for signature issues.”
Human judgment means bias
When trained staffers at county elections departments first review the ballot signatures, they can see the voter’s printed name, age and voter ID. That is enough information to trigger biases based on ethnicity, religion and more, said Itiel Dror, senior cognitive neuroscience researcher at the University College London.
“I believe that there is some internal cultural process in the administration of these elections, with the rejected ballot process that is bouncing out these folks. I don’t know what it is,” said Zack Hudgins, a former Washington state representative and leader on voting rights.
Studies nationally document racial bias generally in government offices, and specifically in elections administration. In one of these studies, elections officials across 48 states were less likely to respond to emails sent from Latino-sounding email addresses relative to non-Latino-sounding addresses. When they did respond, it was with lower quality information about voting requirements, the study showed. Importantly, the researchers found no bias in counties and municipalities where mechanisms under the Voting Rights Act are in place meant to prevent racial discrimination.
“Every voter should have an equal right to their mail ballot being counted, however we know well that Latinos are more likely to have their ballots rejected for signature issues,” said Matt A. Barreto, faculty director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project.
InvestigateWest’s findings in this project echo other studies of vote-by-mail in other states that report race or ethnicity in the voter data. Research on Los Angeles County absentee ballots found that non-English ballots had a higher likelihood of rejection.
When trained election staffers first review ballot signatures, they can see a voter’s name, age and voter ID. That’s enough to trigger bias, based on ethnicity, religion and more.
In other studies, voters from communities of color, and the young and more recently registered, are generally more likely to have ballots rejected. In Georgia, for example, Latino voters were more likely than white voters to have a mistake, such as a signature mismatch, on the return envelope.
Barreto, who has been an expert witness in more than two dozen Washington state and federal voting rights lawsuits, said state and federal governments should provide increased funding, training and guidance to ensure all ballots have an equal chance.
The signature mismatch rates caught Molly Matter’s attention during the 2017 mayoral election in the Washington state town of Wapato. An attorney in private practice, she specializes in federal and state voting rights law.
She said signature verification can be “racially neutral” on its face. But, Matter added, “it is clear that the impact of how they go about the signature verification process places an undue burden on minority voters. Losing the right to vote by a government technicality is no worse than denying these citizens a ballot in the first place.” In early September, Judge Salvador Mendoza — then presiding over the signature matching lawsuit against Benton, Chelan and Yakima counties — recused himself after his own ballot signature was challenged in the recent election.
Regardless of the underlying reasons for mismatches, signature verification is a policy choice over what constitutes voter identification. Voters used to sign their name on a log at a physical polling place and could try to fix any problems in-person.
And yet, no evidence exists of widespread voter fraud in Washington or other vote-by-mail states, a finding confirmed by county auditors.
“I do know that voter fraud is so rare, and certainly disproportionate to the number of signatures being rejected. So maybe there are opportunities for different verification methods,” said Breanne Schuster, an attorney with ACLU of Washington.
Looking for solutions
Given the uncertainties around actual causes to disparities in signature challenge outcomes, solutions remain elusive.
Latino advocates say voters need more information about how to correctly fill out and put together their ballots and the envelopes containing them. They also need to know that their ballot signature is important and that it must match what is on file, even if that is a printed signature.
“If we aren’t communicating that well enough, that’s something we need to solve,” acknowledged Chelan County Auditor Skip Moore.
In Washington state’s Chelan County, ahead of the November 2020 election, voters with Latino names were more than six times more likely than other voters to have their ballots rejected because of signature mismatches, according to InvestigateWest’s analysis of data from four general and primary elections in Adams, Benton, Chelan, Douglas, Franklin, Grant, Walla Walla and Yakima counties.
The Washington Legislature in 2020 included a provision in the state budget that requires the state auditor to study ballot signature rejections. That study is currently underway.
The first phase includes a statewide demographic review that, like InvestigateWest’s analysis, infers a voter’s race or ethnicity from demographic and geographic information in voter files, then measures ballot rejection rates. The second phase will include an analysis of five high-rejection counties and five low-rejection counties to compare variations in processes that influence rejection rates.
While the state’s audit will shed light on ballot rejections, some county officials think it is time to consider something entirely different for voter verification. King County Elections is asking the state legislature to develop some kind of alternative to signatures for voter verification as elections staff see ongoing handwriting challenges of young voters and other groups who have frequent problems with signatures, such as voters with certain disabilities.
Chelan County’s Moore confirmed that he and other county auditors are concerned that in the next 15 years, the majority of voter “signatures” will be print, not cursive. And, in the digital era, cursive and handwritten signatures are quickly becoming obsolete.
It’s a “conundrum,” Moore said of balancing election security against Washington’s tradition of removing barriers to voting.
Lisandra Valencia was surprised that her signature on her November 2020 ballot was challenged. She acknowledges that her signature might have changed over the years. Such “signature instability,” the propensity for signatures to evolve over time, is common, according to experts who have studied the situation. Photo by Dan DeLong/InvestigateWest
Resources such as more staff, especially bilingual staff, would help, said Benton County Auditor Brenda Chilton. Franklin and Yakima counties have bilingual coordinators. Adams and Franklin counties collaborate on voter education and outreach in Spanish, given the crossover among residents and workers in the two counties.
Douglas County Elections Supervisor Ruth Martin said of the disparate mismatch rates: “I see it, I get it, and I want to help with that. We just don’t really have the resources.”
Neither Chelan nor Douglas County has bilingual staff in their elections office. Some of these counties are small, and auditors said they simply need more money to expand voter education throughout the process.
But even translated materials can represent a barrier for some Spanish-speaking voters with lower literacy and education levels. David Morales, former vice-chair of the Washington Commission on Hispanic Affairs, described Yakima’s letters to voters questioning the validity of their signatures as a “wall of text.” That could be part of the explanation for higher rejection rates among Latino voters, he said.
Counties and the state could also address cognitive bias in staff training and, more importantly, in the ballot-review process, Itiel Dror said.
On any review of a signature, for example, elections staffers and the county canvassing board should only see the signature — no printed names, no date of birth, and no address or other information, Dror said.
Adams County Auditor Heidi Hunt spoke of “the light in people’s eyes when they come to fix their signature and you explain the process.” She continued, “I’m always willing to work with lawmakers on any ideas they have. It’s really important to address these issues.”
Rejected ballots can change election results
InvestigateWest’s findings are based on an analysis of state and federal data, in addition to responses to more than 40 public records requests to two Washington state agencies and eight counties, covering 11 million votes cast over four high-turnout elections in 2019 and 2020. More than 50 interviews were conducted with voters, auditors, lawyers, community leaders, elections researchers and other experts, and journalists observed, in person, the review of voter signatures by some county election officials.
In at least three recent elections, signature rejections added up to more than the margin between two candidates.
“We’ve seen evidence throughout the country that people of color and young voters have their ballots disproportionately rejected. And that’s a huge issue because it’s your voice and you have the right to vote and have that vote counted,” said Schuster, an attorney with the ACLU.
In 2004, Washington experienced the closest and most bitterly contested statewide election in its history. Democrat Christine Gregoire won the gubernatorial race by fewer than 200 votes out of the 2.8 million cast.
And in at least three recent examples InvestigateWest examined, signature rejections added up to more than the margin between two candidates:
The 2017 mayoral election in the town of Wapato brought community members and lawyers to the public meetings where Yakima County Canvassing Board members scrutinized signatures. In the end, the Board rejected 21 signatures from Wapato, and Juan Orozco won by four votes.
In another Yakima County race in November 2019, Mike Farmer won Sunnyside City Council Position 5 by just one vote. The Yakima board rejected four signatures from those precincts.
And in November 2020, State Senator Mark Mullet, 5th Legislative District in King County, kept his seat by a margin of 58 votes. The nearly 400 mismatch rejections in the district far exceeded that margin.
“In states that use signature matches, there are going to be some serious questions about reliability and its disproportionate effects on minority communities,” said David Morales, former vice-chair of the Washington Commission on Hispanic Affairs, who observed the 2017 Wapato election signature-scrutinizing proceedings. “It’s worth asking the question of how scientifically valid are the systems we use? If someone challenged this as a valid methodology, I wonder if it would be struck down by the court.”
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Joy Borkholder is a Seattle-based investigative and data journalist. With 15 years of experience in research, she recently began freelancing as a journalist with InvestigateWest and the South Seattle Emerald. She has written about civil rights and child care.