Half of ballots rejected on signature disqualification disenfranchised

So why is it that we set up this system to validate signatures, and the number one reason ballots are disqualified is not fraud, but signatures that don’t match based on changes over time. In short 3,000+  votes didn’t count last year in King County not because they didn’t vote, or voted fraudulently, but in fact because a machine or a person “thought” that their signature didn’t match?

http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0706/clusterduct.php

Berger’s experience, and county statistics, suggests this could be no small headache. In last year’s November election, 7,677 absentee ballots were rejected in King County because of problems with the signature. A little more than half of those were resolved in time to make the votes count.

Mail ballots more likely to record undervotes

This pretty much speaks for itself:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/local_news/epaper/2007/02/07/s3b_voting_0207.html

All paper voting is not equal. A voter casting a paper ballot at a polling place was more likely to record a vote than a voter filling out a paper absentee ballot. Polling places have optical scanners that warn voters if they have made an invalid double-vote or left their entire ballot blank. Absentee voters don’t have that safeguard.