COLUMBIA, S.C. — A federal judge on Tuesday prohibited the rejection of absentee ballots on the basis of a perceived signature mismatch and ordered a review of any ballots discarded thus far for signature reasons.
U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel said any county election boards that wish to employ signature matching techniques going forward must first seek and receive permission from the court and provide voters an opportunity to correct any perceived signature issues before discounting their votes.
The decision comes a day after the South Carolina Election Commission ordered all counties to immediately stop using signature matching procedures for absentee ballots after learning that at least 10 counties had been employing the practice to reject otherwise legitimate ballots.
In a directive communicated to all county boards on Monday, state elections chief Marci Andino said there was no basis in law for performing signature matches on absentee ballot signatures and instructed elections officials to refrain from rejecting any otherwise properly completed ballots on the basis of a perceived signature mismatch.
"If any county board of voter registration and elections ... is employing or plans to employ a signature matching procedure, it must stop doing so immediately," Andino wrote. "Further, any absentee ballot that, as a result of a signature matching procedure, has been rejected, disqualified or otherwise set aside so that it will not be counted should immediately be included with those absentee ballots that will be counted, assuming that absentee ballot otherwise complies with (the absentee voting portion of the South Carolina Code)."
While South Carolina law directs poll managers to compare voters' signatures on the poll list — where they sign their name before voting — with their signature on their identification card, nothing in the state code expressly allows county boards of voter registration and elections to employ any type of signature matching procedure upon receipt of an absentee ballot, according to Andino's order.
She issued her decree after a court-ordered survey of county elections boards found a lack of consistency in how counties deal with absentee ballot signature verification, with at least nine of the state's 46 counties currently rejecting ballots deemed to have mismatched signatures.
Gergel ordered Andino to survey boards on their signature matching procedures last week after the League of Women Voters of South Carolina alleged in a lawsuit that Greenville County had been using paid personnel to match signatures and Richland County had discussed hiring a vendor to perform computerized signature verification.
Andino initially told the judge that while she knew Charleston County had discussed purchasing signature matching software, she was not aware of any county board "that has procedures for, is conducting, or plans to conduct 'signature matching procedures' ... for the 2020 General Election."
However, in the survey conducted last week, 10 of the 40 boards that responded said they were or had planned to conduct signature matching on absentee ballots with the intention of rejecting ballots deemed to contain conflicting scripts.
Spartanburg County later amended its response to say that, after initially verifying signatures, officials had stopped doing so because the volume of absentee ballots had become too onerous.
Six of the nine counties that said they were currently matching absentee ballot signatures this election cycle provided Andino written copies of their verification process, according to court records.
Four of the counties with written policies permit voters whose signatures are questioned to explain the perceived discrepancy and correct it before rejecting their votes, while two counties — Georgetown and Greenville — do not notify voters before disqualifying their votes, according to their written policies.
The Election Commission did not immediately respond to questions about the signature verification order, so it wasn't immediately clear how many absentee votes cast in the 2020 general election had heretofore been discarded due to signature mismatch concerns.
Andino's directive that counties do away with absentee ballot signature verification comes amid a legal challenge filed by the League of Women Voters of South Carolina, an anti-poverty charity called The Family Unit and a Charleston County resident who suffered a hemorrhagic stroke earlier this year and now struggles to write with his dominant hand.
The plaintiffs sued Andino and members of the Election Commission earlier this month, arguing that voters' due process rights were being violated when they were not given an opportunity to correct signature mismatches, among other ballot issues, before their votes were thrown out.
They claim everyone's signature changes over time due to age, eyesight and physical or mental condition, and that signature matching is "highly prone to error," especially when conducted by an untrained layperson.
"Relying on signature verification is an inherently flawed means of determining whether an absentee or mail ballot was fraudulently or inappropriately cast," the suit argues. "No two signatures are identical, even if provided by the same signer."
Christe McCoy-Lawrence, co-president of the League of Women Voters of South Carolina, celebrated Gergel's ruling on signature verification in a statement released Tuesday.
"This decision is a significant win for voter confidence in a year when the COVID-19 pandemic has upended our elections with rule changes, delays, and massive surges in mail voting," McCoy-Lawrence said. "This ruling erases the uncertainty voters might feel about whether their absentee ballot signature may not exactly match a previous one on record."
