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A mail-in ballot for the primary election. (Hali Bernstein Saylor\/Boulder City Review)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
By Victor Joecks
\nLas Vegas Review-Journal<\/p>\n
Clark County election officials accepted my signature on eight ballot return envelopes during the general election. It\u2019s more evidence that signature verification is a flawed security measure.<\/p>\n
For months, election officials have told Nevadans not to worry about ballots piling up in apartment trash cans or sent to wrong addresses.<\/p>\n
\u201cDiscarded mail ballots cannot just be picked up and voted by anyone,\u201d a fact sheet from the secretary of state\u2019s office\u00a0says<\/a>. \u201cAll mail ballots must be signed on the ballot return envelope. This signature is used to authenticate the voter and confirm that it was actually the voter and not another person who returned the mail ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n I wanted to test that claim by simulating what might happen if someone returned ballots that didn\u2019t belong to him or her. Plenty of people had this opportunity. Billy Geurin, a 10-year Las Vegas resident,\u00a0found five loose ballots in his apartment mailroom<\/a>. A reader emailed me a picture of a pile of mail on the side of the road, which included loose ballots. There are\u00a0numerous pictures of similar examples on social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nine people participated in this test. I wrote their names in cursive using my normal handwriting. They then copied my version of their name onto their ballot envelope. This two-step process was necessary to ensure no laws were broken.<\/p>\n On Monday, I asked Clark County Registrar Joe Gloria about this scenario. If ballots signed by someone else \u201ccame through, we would still have the signature match to rely on for identity,\u201d he said. Asked if he was confident the safeguard would identify those ballots, he said, \u201cI\u2019m confident that the process has been working throughout this process.\u201d<\/p>\n He was wrong. Eight of the nine ballots went through. In other words, signature verification had an 89 percent failure rate in catching mismatched signatures.<\/p>\n This could explain how a ballot \u201csigned\u201d by Rosemarie Hartle, who died in 2017, made it through signature verification, as reported by 8 News Now. It could explain how Jill Stokke, a longtime Las Vegas resident, was told the signature on her ballot matched, even though\u00a0she said she never received it<\/a>.<\/p>\n County officials aren\u2019t working proactively to determine whether unscrupulous actors abused this vulnerability in a widespread fashion. Gloria\u2019s office doesn\u2019t \u201chave an investigatory team.\u201d He said his office catches fraudulent votes \u201cwhen they\u2019re reported to us.\u201d So if a criminal doesn\u2019t admit he committed voter fraud, Clark County is unlikely to find out about it. Willful ignorance isn\u2019t an election security strategy.<\/p>\n Leave aside the presidential race. Fewer than 200 votes\u00a0separate<\/a>\u00a0the leading candidates in Senate District 5. In 2018, state Sen. Keith Pickard\u00a0won his race by 24 votes<\/a>. Even small amounts of fraud can swing results.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear how much voter fraud took place in Nevada. But it\u2019s clear signature verification isn\u2019t the fail-safe security check elections officials made it out to be.<\/p>\n