Lawsuit contends Washington’s signature-based ballot verification is unconstitutional

A law­suit filed last week in King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court is chal­leng­ing the “sig­na­ture match­ing” process used by elec­tion offi­cials across the Ever­green State that results in tens of thou­sands of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers hav­ing their bal­lots reject­ed and being dis­en­fran­chised every elec­tion cycle.

The suit asks that the “faux sci­ence” of vot­er ver­i­fi­ca­tion be thrown out because it vio­lates the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion. If plain­tiffs get the relief they are request­ing, elec­tion offi­cials would no be longer use sig­na­tures on bal­lot envelopes, except to sim­ply con­firm that the return enve­lope was signed.

A total of 24,000 bal­lots were dis­qual­i­fied in 2020, and 27,000 and ris­ing so far in 2022. In the last three elec­tion cycles, argues the suit, sig­na­ture checks have inval­i­dat­ed more than 113,000 bal­lots from Wash­ing­ton voters.

“The impact is hard­ly neu­tral,” in the words of Kevin Hamil­ton, vet­er­an elec­tion law expert with the Perkins Coie law firm, who filed the suit. The plain­tiffs are a trio of dis­en­fran­chised vot­ers along with the Vet Voice Foun­da­tion, El Cen­tro de la Raza and Wash­ing­ton Bus, which seeks to ener­gize younger voters.

“Active mil­i­tary, Lati­no, Black and Asian Amer­i­can vot­ers saw their bal­lots reject­ed at twice the rate of white vot­ers over forty,” added Hamil­ton. “Vot­ers aged 18 to 21 had their bal­lots reject­ed at ten times the rate of white vot­ers over forty. Asian-Amer­i­can vot­ers aged 18 to 21 had their bal­lots reject­ed at twelve times the rate of white vot­ers over forty. Black and His­pan­ic vot­ers aged 18 to 21 had their bal­lots reject­ed at six­teen times the rate of white overs over forty. This is absurd and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under Washington’s State Constitution.”

Elec­tion work­ers cas­es are charged with scan­ning mil­lions of bal­lot envelopes under Washington’s vote-by-mail sys­tem. They are tasked with scru­ti­niz­ing whether sig­na­tures match sig­na­tures that vot­ers have on file.

The ver­i­fi­ca­tion require­ment has been elec­tion offi­cials’ chief defense against alle­ga­tions that the sys­tem is open to vot­er fraud.

“Few if any” cas­es of fraud have been uncov­ered due to the sig­na­ture ver­i­fi­ca­tion process, accord­ing to the suit, which names as defen­dants Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs and King Coun­ty Elec­tions Direc­tor Julie Wise.

“There­fore,” says the suit, “Washington’s Sig­na­ture Match­ing Pro­ce­dure has dis­en­fran­chised tens of thou­sands of law­ful vot­ers to no dis­cernible benefit.”

As to the dis­en­fran­chised: “These vot­ers did every­thing required of them under Wash­ing­ton law: They filled out their bal­lots, sealed the envelopes, signed them and returned them on time. Still, their votes were not counted.”

The Perkins Coie firm has defend­ed vot­er rights, and rep­re­sent­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic groups, in lit­i­ga­tion from coast to coast. It recent­ly per­suad­ed courts in Mon­tana to over­turn efforts by Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors to make it more dif­fi­cult for Native Amer­i­cans and young peo­ple to vote. The law­mak­ers had passed a trio of mea­sures that out­lawed same-day vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, said stu­dent ID alone was not enough to reg­is­ter, and out­lawed paid third-par­ty bal­lot collection.

Hamil­ton worked in Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell’s clos­est-in-the-nation defeat of Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Slade Gor­ton in 2000, defend­ed Chris­tine Gregoire’s 2004 129-vote win for Gov­er­nor in Chelan Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court, and worked the 2008 lit­i­ga­tion and court plead­ings that con­firmed elec­tion of Min­neso­ta’s for­mer U.S. Sen­a­tor Al Franken. He rep­re­sent­ed the ACLU in land­mark lit­i­ga­tion in which a fed­er­al judge end­ed the at-large elec­tions of Yaki­ma City Coun­cil mem­bers, a process under which no Lati­no or Lati­na had ever won a city coun­cil seat.

Hamil­ton was in Geor­gia after the 2020 elec­tion, defend­ing Joe Biden’s nar­row win in the Peachtree State against mal­adroit legal chal­lenges brought by Trump allies. Perkins Coie is cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ing two nar­row win­ners in Ari­zona, Gov­er­nor-elect Katie Hobbs and Attor­ney Gen­er­al-elect Kris Mayes. Mayes’ oppo­nent, Abra­ham Hamadeh, has asked courts to void the election.

The sig­na­ture ver­i­fi­ca­tion suit details the almost Kafkaesque expe­ri­ence of a young vot­er named Kaeleene Escalante Mar­tinez, who had her bal­lot dis­al­lowed in three suc­ces­sive elec­tion cycles.

After her bal­lot was reject­ed in the 2020 elec­tion, Mar­tinez com­plet­ed the form to “cure” the sig­na­ture issue, only to see her vote not count. Mar­tinez saw her bal­lots reject­ed twice more in this year’s pri­ma­ry and gen­er­al elections.

“In short, she did every­thing that was required of her to cast her bal­lot and exer­cise her fun­da­men­tal right to vote,” says the suit, lat­er adding: “Ms Escalante Mar­tinez recent­ly learned that, remark­ably, for a third time in as many elec­tions, elec­tion offi­cials mis­tak­en­ly reject­ed her sig­na­ture on her ballot.”

Bethan Cantrell, a sec­ond plain­tiff, has in words of the suit, a “chron­ic con­di­tion that makes writ­ing and sign­ing her name extreme­ly uncomfortable.”

A “com­pli­cat­ed sig­na­ture” by a third plain­tiff, Daisha Britt, has result­ed in repeat rejections.

Until and unless the ver­i­fi­ca­tion require­ment is thrown out, vot­ers must act to “cure” the rejec­tion of their signatures.

Coun­ty elec­tion offices noti­fy vot­ers whose bal­lots are chal­lenged and have until just before cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to com­plete a form and “cure” the chal­lenge. (For this elec­tion, that was 4:30 PM Pacif­ic Time today, as cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is tomorrow.)

The law­suit not­ed that elec­tion offi­cials have oth­er means to iden­ti­fy improp­er bal­lots, includ­ing check­ing Social Secu­ri­ty records, and checks with the state Depart­ment of Health and Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions for dead or inel­i­gi­ble voters.