[dunham]

If the person living there is so inclined and successfully forges the signatures on the ballots.

At least in WA state, a signature is required on the exterior of the envelope, and it is validated against the signature on the voter registration form.

[benjohnson]

Signatures are a lousy form of validation for voting in my opinion:

I'm a Washington state resident and because I sign a lot of checks I have two forms of my signature: My 'fancy' signature that has every letter of my name and my check signing signature that is a scrawl of simple squiggles.

I used my fancy signature for voter registration and accidentally used my squiggle signature for my fist mail in ballot and did't get any kickback. I've used it for six years and King County elections still has never questioned it.

[ncallaway]

As a counterpoint, I also live in Washington.

About five years ago I decided to change my signature. The first ballot I mailed in after changing my signature was rejected for having a non-matching signature, and I had to prove my identity and update my signature on file with the King County elections in order for my ballot to be counted.

[breser]

My signature ended up changing over time and I had to update my signature with the county elections office in Washington to stop my ballots from being rejected. So really not sure how you're slipping by.

[heymijo]

In Ohio its signature and ID number on your driver's license or last 4 of your social security number.

So ballots go to the wrong place, fine. The probability of random person there being interested and then finding any of this information is low.

[listenallyall]

Election officials could assign "strict" signature validators to certain targeted districts, so approx 10% of ballots get thrown out, and "loose" validators elsewhere, so only 2% of votes get tossed.

[javagram]

That would be illegal. See the “Bush v Gore” decision which was about a similar idea but applied to counting hanging chads, etc. rather than signatures.

[listenallyall]

Of course it is illegal. The discussion is about how anti-fraud measures (like signature verification) could potentially be flipped to actually assist in cheating/fraud.

Let's keep in mind, depending on where power lies post-election, that doing something illegal, even if caught, doesn't necessarily means one would be punished for it.

[dTal]

Sounds great! I'm sure nobody would take advantage of that.

[pc86]

Sounds like a violation of equal protection.

[chrisseaton]

Do you think they have handwriting experts validating every vote?

[dmurray]

And even if they did...most of the time their opinion would be "yeah, looks OK". You'd like that to just be stage 1 and call for further scrutiny if it turns out it would affect the result - but you can't, if you keep the evidence longer to revisit it during a recount, you lose the secrecy of the ballot.

[abhorrence]

You can do it the other way around. If the signature seems fishy, you set it aside unopened, and only do further validation before opening it if the election is close enough for it to matter.

For example, in an election with 100 votes cast. If 10 signatures are suspicious, you only do extended validation and open them if the election was won by a margin smaller than 10.

[lefrenchy]

I’m confused.. do you think it’s likely that someone forges the signature of a person they’ve never met within a believable margin of error? Seems the burden of proof is on the people claiming that happens a lot

[gerdesj]

A few years back me and the wife went on a cruise that disembarked in NOLA. We had a lovely time and at one point went to buy some new luggage cases: one of ours had fallen to bits and the other had suffered somewhat (my fault.) We took the tram out of town to a mall on the outskirts and hit a decent sized department store.

I was offered a tablet to sign on when I offered up my card. So I took back my card and signed it on the back and then loosely repeated that same signature on the tablet thing.

I'd had that card for around two years. I never sign them these days because it doesn't really mean anything around here any more in the UK. Bear in mind I am old enough to remember signing cheques for "To cash".

[stordoff]

How much validation is actually done in practice? In the UK, I sign something about once at year _at most_ - I can't remember the last time I signed something without going back a few years, and I've no idea how I signed it.

[soco]

But how could somebody actually KNOW the signatures of the previous tenants? In order to try forging them you need first some models...