Why would your ballot not be counted?

Yavapai County rejects less than one-half percent of mail-in ballots

Yavapai County Recorder Leslie Hoffman said she wishes she could qualify every single vote that comes through her office.

But if an early ballot comes in very close to the 7 p.m. deadline on Election Day and the voter didn’t sign the affidavit envelope or the signature doesn’t match the one on file, there’s not much Hoffman can do in the limited time frame prescribed by law.

Staff in the Recorder’s Office is trained in forensic handwriting analysis every two years. The office has the training and policy in place when a signature on the affidavit envelope doesn’t match the signature on file or it is missing completely, Hoffman said.

Two or three staff members will review the signatures and determine whether it is valid or not. If not, or if there are questions, they contact the voter. Often the office has only an address – no phone number or email. If the early ballot arrived early enough, staff mails a letter that requests the voter to contact the office because of a problem with the affidavit envelope.

If they registered to vote using the online process, the signature is what is on their driver’s license. Often, they signed the license years ago when maybe they were 16, 17 years old. Most people understand, especially if they come into the office and see the signature on file.

“At 20, 21, their signatures have changed significantly. Girls have dropped the hearts over the i’s, for instance,” Hoffman said.

One person told her his current signature looks nothing like what was on file, and in 10 years when he becomes a doctor, it won’t look like his current signature, he joked.

Certain handwriting patterns do remain the same through the years, even if the signer switches from right to left to upright writing. Even as a person ages and handwriting becomes shaky or goes above or below the line, staff can recognize it from signatures on file.

Sometimes when people are contacted about a problem, the first thing they say is, “Are you trying to keep me from voting?”

“We try to be as fair as we can. Ninety-nine percent of the time, when the people come in and look at the signature we use to compare with and then at the affidavit envelope, they go, ‘OK, we understand why you called,” Hoffman said.

This year, the affidavit envelope included a line for voters to write their phone numbers. About 60 percent of voters provided numbers. Hoffman also placed a bigger STOP sign on the envelope alerting voters about the need for a signature.

“We got very few envelopes with no signatures on them. We’re very happy about that,” she said.

Yavapai County had the highest voter turnout in the state with 84.4 percent, slightly less than the last open election in 2008, which had 84.8 percent turnout.

Hoffman said the county had a record number of registered voters, record number of early ballots mailed out, and a decrease of staff to handle it all. Fewer workers does not mean a decrease in level of service, only that the department is always working on implementing better procedures and technology, Hoffman said.