![]() That's certainly been the case with the pandemic. "If you move, you may not even get your ballot, and we know younger voters, racial, ethnic minorities, lower-income voters tend to move more. Voters in the state whose ballots are invalidated will be sent a new mail-in ballot. That rejection rate was higher for Black voters, however, at nearly 7%. While the numbers are very preliminary since early voting began on September 4, about 2% of the roughly 10,000 absentee ballots returned as of Friday had been rejected because of some issue, including potential signature problems, according to data from the state's board of elections. Those issues are already playing out in North Carolina, one of the two states where early voting has begun. Younger voters were also more likely to have their ballots rejected than older voters, according to University of Florida professor Daniel Smith, who compiled the data from the Florida Division of Elections. One University of Florida study found Black and Hispanic voters in the state were twice as likely to have their ballots rejected as White voters. The issue is more widespread in the Black and Hispanic communities. Rejected ballots higher for minority voters "If voters believe that there's a one in 50 chance their ballot would be rejected, they would be quite surprised," said Barry Burden, a professor and director of the Election Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In Wisconsin, nearly 2% of mailed-in ballots were rejected in the April primary, according to the Wisconsin Election Commission - meaning one out of every 50 ballots was tossed. The Washington Post and NPR recently totaled data that showed the number was more than 500,000, though that didn't cover the whole country or account for ballots that voters fixed to allow them to count. Every state has different laws, but even innocent mistakes can invalidate a ballot: In New York, for instance, a ballot can be disqualified if it's sealed with a piece of tape. "How about signatures? They don't even want to have signatures verified," Trump said.ĭuring the primary season, hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots were rejected across the country. Trump harped on the matter again Saturday in an interview with Fox News' Jeanine Pirro. Trump has continued to falsely claim mail-in voting is ripe with fraud, and last month he falsely said congressional Democrats were pushing legislation "banning signature verification," when the bill only includes a requirement for states to allow voters to correct signature problems. Republicans, too, have put millions into fighting legal battles against Democrats. The poll found 68% of Trump's supporters said they prefer to vote in person on Election Day, as opposed to 21% of Biden supporters.ĭemocrats, including the party's House and Senate campaign arms, have invested millions this election cycle in legal efforts aimed at voting laws, including trying to make it easier for voters' ballots to be accepted and for those ballots to be "cured" if a ballot is rejected. In the most recent CNN poll, about half of former Vice President Joe Biden's supporters say they prefer to vote by mail. Problems surrounding rejected mail-in ballots are especially concerning for Democrats, whose voters make up a sizable majority of those planning to vote by mail. ![]() "But there's not really time for that or resources for that because of the pandemic." "Ordinarily, if you're going to roll out mail-in balloting on a large scale, you do a big voter education effort," Hasen added. But for some people, that's not a safe option in November," said election law expert Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine and a CNN analyst. "You're much more likely to have your vote counted if you cast it in person. The expanded mail-in voting has also led to more ballots being rejected - with signature problems a key factor. Legal fights over absentee votes aren't a new phenomenon, but they've taken on a newfound importance because of the surge in requests for mail-in ballots and states expanding access to vote-by-mail and, in some cases, conducting elections almost entirely by mail for the first time. ![]() President Donald Trump and Republicans are arguing for strict matches, while Democrats are pushing for easier rules letting people prove they are who they say they are, even if their John Hancocks have changed a bit. With voting already underway in two states, Democrats and Republicans are drawing battle lines across the country over voter signatures for mail-in ballots, with lawsuits over how signatures are evaluated and whether voters can fix ballots that get tossed. The 2020 equivalent could wind up being mismatched signatures. Remember hanging chads, Florida's 2000 election nightmare? This story was originally published by CNN.
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