Ballot Rejection Rates Study
In 2022, the Washington State Auditor conducted a performance audit to evaluate the signature rejection rates for our mail in voting. The 69-page report that followed stated that ballot rejection rates were inconsistent across the counties and higher for certain ethnic groups and for younger voters.
Auditor’s Report
You can review this report below:
Pilot Program
As a result of this report, the Washington Secretary of State’s office decided to implement a pilot program for alternative methods of verifying a voter’s identity or alternative signature verification processes.
There were different things that were tested for this pilot program, some better than others. One that stands out is the pilot program King County conducted. It has caused quite the commotion, recently. We reported about it HERE.
OmniBallot
King County contracted with Democracy Live for use of their OmniBallot signature curing text message and app, called TXT2Cure. When a voter’s signature was rejected, TXT2Cure would send a text message to the voter, if they had the number on file. The text message led to a portal where someone could cure their signature online. (Curing is when you re-do your signature or sign a declaration which then allows your ballot to be counted.)
The portal allowed people to sign with their finger and submit a new signature or check a box attesting to their identity. The reason this raised some eyebrows is because King County is the largest and has the highest rate of Democrat voters in the state, by far. Making it this easy to cure a bad signature gave the Democrats an advantage.
Other concerns about the portal were the security of the data, whether it was sent out to Democrat and Republican voters equally, whether it made it easier for someone to submit fraudulent ballots and have an easy get-around for the signature verification, among other concerns.
It also felt like everyone was a little blind-sided by King County’s use of the app. The Washington State Republican party even filed a lawsuit against King County to stop the future use of the system. Little did we know at the time that the plan was to implement this system statewide.
Other OmniBallot Capabilities
While all this was going on, and people were investigating this online portal, we also discovered OmniBallot was able to issue ballots to voters online. Except you didn’t have to even be a registered voter to create yourself a ballot using any King County address. There appeared to be some major flaws with the system, as we discussed in a previous article.
Expanding the Flawed Product
After reviewing some records, we discovered that the Secretary of State is asking for funds to expand this OmniBallot portal to all counties across the state. They are asking for $352,000 to expand this program to all counties.
Requesting Funding
“The current voter portal lacks secure and efficient methods for voters to correct (cure) issues with their ballots. The 2022 SAO Audit report underscored this gap, showing that younger voters and those from racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to have their ballots rejected. It is crucial to address these deficiencies to ensure that all voters, regardless of physical ability, location, or demographic background, can fully participate in elections.
OSOS proposes to enhance the voter portal by integrating two effective technologies: OmniBallot and TXT2Cure. OmniBallot will offer a secure, accessible way for voters to mark their ballots electronically or print a blank ballot to mark by hand, improving both the accessibility and security of the online replacement ballot system. This integration consolidates the marked or blank ballot with a return packet, reducing the risk of incomplete submissions, which would prevent the ballot from being counted.
TXT2Cure will provide voters with immediate text notifications if their ballot is challenged, directing them to an online platform to quickly and securely submit a signature cure form. These technologies address the issues identified in the 2022 SAO Audit by enhancing accessibility, reducing ballot rejection rates, and ensuring all voters can fully participate in the electoral process.
To implement these improvements, OSOS seeks funding to cover software licenses and support services for both systems, including ongoing integration costs, training for election staff, and technical support. These enhancements will be available to all counties in Washington State, ensuring a more accessible, secure, and user friendly voting process for all voters.” (Full report below)
More Pilot Programs
Another interesting pilot program the Washington Secretary of State wants to conduct is signature verification by machine, instead of humans. This is worrisome because Automatic Signature Verification systems can be set at different levels. In the case of the machine used in Pierce County, they can set the system to accept signatures depending on the confidence level the system has that the signature is a match. We have concerns that this threshold will be set too low. After all, the goal is to reduce rejection rates, remember?
We will continue to keep an eye on what shenanigans the Washington Secretary of State is up to and do our best to inform the people who are most affected by it: you, the voters.
