5 Questions about the R-71 check: What’s that you signed?
Good afternoon signature-check junkies! Our team is talking you through your R-71 check questions in our daily “5 Questions” post. You asked about dinging for dupes and signature sleuthing … and we say …
Q) What’s the consequence for signing a petition multiple times?
A) Most people who sign a petition more than once didn’t realize they have done so! Sometimes they don’t remember they had already signed the sheet, or get confused by the many petitions circulating around their town and they lose track.
If, in the checking process, our office does find the same name signed on more than one petition, we reject all but the first valid signature. (This is spelled out in RCW 29A.72.230 .) So even if a person did want to get counted more than once, they just can’t be!
These types of cases are generally not referred to law enforcement, though they can be if it can be proved that the person knowingly went out and signed multiple times on a petition.
Q) Sometimes signatures are set aside because there is “no voter signature on file” – how does a name get on the voter rolls without a signature in the first place?
A) The reason there is “no voter signature on file” is not because a person hasn’t signed the voter registration! It generally is a result of a clerical error that happens when the county scans names in and then transfers them to the state. When we discover a signature that is not on file in our system, we make a call to the county where the registration is located and we ask them to send us a better image. Which they do.
As a side note, signatures are required information when registering to vote. And it’s not just for verifying that it’s you who is voting by mail or signing a petition (though that’s a big part) … your signature attests to the fact that you are eligable to vote. It’s your word on file, so to speak.
Q) How can signature checkers tell whether a signature on a petition matches the one in the database?
A) Our checkers follow our signature-matching standards spelled out in WAC 434-379-020 and are trained by managers who themselves have had extensive experience in verifying signatures.
The standards spell out what our checkers look for – irregular spacing, slants of rizes, fluency and the heights and widths of letters. It’s a tough job, and we’re lucky to have such dedicated and careful workers on the case checking names!
Q) I still don’t get it. Why are there additional checks on “rejected” signatures and not additional checks” for “accepted” signatures?
A) Case law supports the view that once a valid registration of a signer is identified, and the signature is a match, there is no reason to go back and attempt to reject that signature. To recheck all approved signatures would nullify the vast majority of verification work already completed.
These practices are longstanding practices used by the Elections Division for decades and are not designed or intended to benefit one side or the other. All signatures that are rejected by the first checker go to a senior checker who acts as a “second set of eyes” and digs deeper to find the registration on file. Signatures not found at this step go to a final step: they are run against to the most up-to-date voter information available, to make sure we have not missed any recent registrations.
Q) I’ve submitted a bunch of comments about how I feel about the referendum and how it would impact Washingtonians – why aren’t you approving my comments? Isn’t this America?
A) It’s not because we don’t love you, promise! (And yes, you are still in America). We respect your right to your opinion and are glad you are so passionate and engaged about this topic. However, because this is a state blog, we cannot use this public resource to house comments endorsing candidates or ballot measures. If you have questions, comments about the checking process and suggestions for us, we’re all ears – but this isn’t the venue for your political campaigning (or declarations of love for a certain department store, for that matter…).
Have a question about the R-71 checks? If you can’t find it in our comprehensive R-71 FAQs, then leave us a comment and our team will do our best to answer or clarify in our daily “5 Questions” posts.
5 thoughts on “5 Questions about the R-71 check: What’s that you signed?”
Thank you for your response to my question, but I’m still unclear on this. You wrote:
“The reason there is “no voter signature on file” is not because a person hasn’t signed the voter registration! It generally is a result of a clerical error that happens when the county scans names in and then transfers them to the state. When we discover a signature that is not on file in our system, we make a call to the county where the registration is located and we ask them to send us a better image. ”
It’s my understanding that when a voter registers on the Internet, your system takes their driver’s license number and matches it to the signature provided by motor vehicles, and they can’t register unless they have the driver’s license, which means there will be a signature. If a voter registers in person or through someone helping them register, they fill out and sign a voter registration card.
Therefore, I still do not understand how you get a voter on the list without a signature. If the voter has registered on the Internet, they can’t be registered without the driver’s license signature. If they have registered on a voter registration card, I don’t understand how their name could be transferred to you without the signature on the card also being transferred to you.
Again, can you walk me though an example of how a voter can appear on your list but you do not have a signature for that voter?
Also, I asked about the two different signature databases — you mentioned that only the master checkers can see the master live statewide database, and the master checkers only check the rejected sigs. Therefore, it would seem that all accepted sigs are checked against a secondary database.
Can you explain the system whereby the sigs are in that secondary database? Is it a copy of the statewide database, or is it a sub-database created by exporting sigs from the statewide database?
Tell us the exact petitions where rejected signatures got FIVE looks before referendum 71.
How come whenever the rejected signatures are looked at again and again and again there is a massive shift to accepted status? Isn’t the process flawed if you look at the same rejected signatures over and over and over and over again and get very different numbers in each case?
Finally, I see that you answered the question I asked. However, I am not satisfied that one can just assume that people did not realize they had signed more than once. What is the point of having a law against signing more than once if you are not going to enforce the law? This is really outrageous: an invitation to fraud.
Hi Bev – Sorry it’s taken awhile to respond to your questions from Wednesday night. Regarding your first question, online voter registration allows the voter to send electronic information to the Elections Division, which in turn sends a portion of the data to the Department of Licensing in order to retrieve the signature image for that applicant. In a small number of cases, the signature is not available for return to Elections.It also could be that the signature is poorly scanned.
Regarding your second question, our historical signature checking process that includes a first check and a master check has relied in recent years on an extract of data from the state voter registration database that is loaded into a checking-and-counting software application. For R-71, we have added a “recent registration” check in which the “recent registration” checkers – not the master checkers – access the actual state voter registration database system.
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