BELL COUNTY, Texas — The State of Texas protects against voter fraud by requiring a voter's signature on both their absentee ballot request application and the mail-in ballot itself. A county ballot board later compares the signatures. If they don't match, and the board cannot compare it to other signatures on file, the ballot doesn't count.
When the state's rules were challenged in court, one judge ruled that the Texas secretary of state should be required to either advise local election officials that mail-in ballots may not be rejected using the existing signature-comparison process, or require them to set up a notification system. Monday, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision.
This left absentee voters in many counties with no way of knowing if a signature error on their ballot or application will nullify their vote until it's too late. Bell County is an exception.
Voters can make an honest mistake on their ballot signatures for several reasons, Bell County Election Administrator Matthew Dutton said. Sometimes a spouse signs the ballot application, sometimes a voter forgets to sign and voters who cannot sign for themselves may use two different witnesses to sign the paperwork for them. State rules say any witness who aids another voter must sign both documents.
If a county ballot board starts to compare ballot signatures early enough in the early voting cycle, they may be able to let voters know there is an issue and allow them to correct it. Dutton said the ballot board chose to meet early for several reasons.
"One, if there is a deficiency the people can have time to find a way to correct it. Also, it's a lot of work to do it (verify ballots) in one day," Dutton said.
While Bell County's ballot board was able to start meeting last week, not all counties have that option.
According to the 2020 State of Texas Handbook for Election Judges and Clerks, ballot boards in counties with less than 100,000 people cannot start working until the end of early voting. Counties that have more than 100,000 are allowed to start to work on the eighth day before the end of early voting, though they are not required to do so.
Coryell County's election office told 6 News Tuesday that they would have to start on the 31st of October by state law. Like many local counties, Coryell has a population of less than 100,000. McLennan County meets that requirement but the board is still waiting until October 31 at this time.
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