From the Auditor

In our current election system, your signature on your ballot return envelope is of utmost importance. Your signature affirms the declaration printed on the envelope that under penalty of perjury you meet the qualifications to vote and you have not voted in any other jurisdiction in that election. The declaration also informs voters that it is illegal to vote if they are not a United States citizen; are incarcerated for a felony conviction; and that it is illegal to cast a ballot or sign a ballot declaration on behalf of another voter. A person willfully violating these provisions is guilty of a class C felony.

When your ballot arrives at the Elections Department, elections staff trained to state standards examine your signature on the envelope declaration prior to processing the ballot. It is the one piece of information that verifies that the ballot received is yours. The signature on the outside of the ballot return envelope is compared with the signature on file in the voter registration database for each voter, and a determination is made whether the signatures match. A variation between the signatures resulting from the substitution of initials or the use of a common nickname is OK if the surname and handwriting are clearly the same. If you are unable to sign your ballot envelope, you can affirm the envelope declaration with another type of mark witnessed and signed by two other people. I am often asked, is there a way to verify the identity of people who provide witness signatures. The answer is, “No.”

In situations where signatures do not match, or the ballot envelope is unsigned, elections staff immediately prepare and send letters to the voter requesting an update to “cure” the mismatch with a signature that matches the one on the envelope. Additional attempts at voter follow-up are made by telephone and email. If a voter does not respond, the ballot envelope remains unopened, the ballot is not counted, and a determination is made by the canvassing board prior to election certification. You can find statistics for the number of ballots with uncured signatures in an election posted on the auditor’s website: masoncountywaelections.gov/previous-elections-results-data.

For your vote to count, your ballot must pass signature verification. This is why it’s a good idea to check your signature on file in the voter registration database with a quick visit to the Vote Center. Starting with the November 2023 General Election, human signature verification will be facilitated with a new ballot envelop scanning and sorting machine. The process will be more viewable for election observers. Hope to see you then.