Oregon City’s Roxane Riseling said it was “very weird” to get a letter from the elections office for her daughter Megan saying that signatures didn’t match after the September police-bond measure; the same thing happened to both the mother and daughter in two different recent elections, and they say that their signatures “haven’t changed.” Clackamas County has some of the highest proportions of ballots being rejected because county elections officials determine that the voter’s signature on the ballot doesn’t match their registration card.
According to state law, these voters are sent a notice telling them to send in a new registration card or their vote won’t be counted. But most voters don’t respond to the notice and end up getting kicked off the registration rolls. Over time, this can have the effect of disenfranchising large numbers of voters.
Although voters are given a prepaid envelope to send in a new voter-registration form when their local election’s office determines that they mailed in a bad signature, they are given no guarantee that the new signature will cause their vote to be counted.
Full Article: Pamplin Media Group – Elections offices reject votes due to ‘non-matching’ signatures.