Article Title
Signed, Sealed, Delivered? Problems with the Use of Signature Matching to Verify Mail Voter Identity
Abstract
During the 2020 election, the basic struggle to balance ballot access and election integrity played out in a more public fashion than at any time in recent memory. This begs several important questions. First, how did the American election system get to this point? The legal standards governing election law have long been debated and that uncertainty unleashed a flood of litigation in 2020. Second, why use signature matching—a practice which is methodologically unsound and steadily falling out of use—at all? The use of handwritten signatures to verify identity rather than to evidence attestation is on the decline in other areas of the law. Third, how should the voting system grapple with the problem of bad faith? The bad faith legal challenges following the 2020 election revealed the enduring artifice of voter fraud claims for what they were: a transparent attempt at voter suppression. Lastly, where does the law go from here?
Recommended Citation
Signed, Sealed, Delivered? Problems with the Use of Signature Matching to Verify Mail Voter Identity,
16
Fla. A&M U. L. Rev.
25
(2022).
Available at:
https://commons.law.famu.edu/famulawreview/vol16/iss1/3