If voter photo voter ID is required and signatures actually verified, then mail in could work. But neither of these practices are in use in many states. Tip: WA is not the United States. Your state has ID check.
CHANG: Some of your Republican colleagues say that mail-in voting creates more of a risk for fraud because you can't verify someone's ID in person. How would you respond to that?
WYMAN: Well, that's not been our experience here in Washington state. First and foremost, we've had voter ID at the time of registration since 2006 in our state, so we actually do have an ID check. And beyond that, we did a comparison in 2018 of voting history, and we found that about .004% of our voters did, it appears, try to vote fraudulently. They voted for someone else who had passed away, or they voted more than once. And that was 142 people out of 3.2 million ballots cast.
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The most common method to verify that absentee/mail ballots come from the intended voter is to conduct signature verification. When voters return an absentee/mail ballot, they must sign an affidavit on the ballot envelope. When the ballot is returned to the election office, election officials have a process for examining each and every signature and comparing it to other documents in their files that contain the voter signature—usually the voter registration record.
If a ballot is missing a signature or the signature does not match the one on file, some states offer voters the opportunity to “cure” their ballots. The election official will contact the voter explaining the problem and asking them to verify their information and that that they did in fact cast the ballot. See Table 15: States with Signature Cure Processes for more details.
Some states have other methods for verifying absentee/mail ballots, such as requiring voters to provide a copy of an identification document or to have the absentee/mail ballot witnessed or notarized.
Thirty-one states conduct signature verification on returned absentee/mail ballots:
- Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington and West Virginia.
Ten states, the Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C., verify that an absentee/mail ballot envelope has been signed but do not conduct signature verification:
- Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Maryland, Nebraska, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and Wyoming.
Seven states require the signature of a witness in addition to the voter’s signature:
- Alabama (two witnesses or a notary), Alaska (witness or notary), Louisiana, Minnesota (witness or notary), North Carolina (two witnesses or a notary), South Carolina and Wisconsin.
Three states require the absentee/mail ballot envelope to be notarized:
- Mississippi, Missouri and Oklahoma.
Arkansas requires a copy of the voter’s ID to be returned with the absentee/mail ballot. And Georgia requires the voter’s driver’s license number or state identification card number, which is compared with the voter’s registration record. Note: Minnesota and Ohio also require this information, though Minnesota also requires a witness signature, and Ohio conducts signature verification.
States also verify absentee ballot applications; see Table 8: How States Verify Absentee Ballot Applications for further details. |
