Nate Kennedy was in a hurry when he arrived at a Motor Vehicle Division office in 2021 to get his driver’s license. He’d just moved back from out of state, and marked the box to register to vote, quickly scribbling his signature on the electronic pad. He was all set to become one of the thousands of voters not affiliated with a political party who would play a key role in determining the state’s leaders in the next midterm election. When he submitted his mail ballot in November 2022, however, that messy signature would cost him his vote. Election officials who compared the signature on his mail ballot envelope to the electronic scribble on file weren’t convinced they came from the same person. So, as the law requires, they rejected his ballot. He didn’t find out until weeks later. “I was so irritated,” said Kennedy, who lives in Gilbert. “It made absolutely no sense to me.” With more people in Arizona and across the country voting by mail, election officials are increasingly relying on the signatures on ballot envelopes to confirm voters’ identities. And in response to unsubstantiated claims of widespread mail voter fraud, some have tightened their signature verification processes. That’s especially true in Maricopa County, the largest county in Arizona and a focal point of false claims about election fraud. Under a more stringent review process, the number of ballots rejected in the county for questionable signatures tripled, from 586 to 1,798, between the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterm. That doesn’t include the ballots rejected because there was no voter signature at all — 1,299 in 2022. But flaws in the county’s signature verification process may lead to disenfranchisement that disproportionately affects voters who are younger, newly registered or those who do not belong to a political party, Votebeat's Jen Fifield and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting's Hannah Bassett found in a monthslong analysis of the rejected midterm ballots. In a state where some elections are decided by just a few hundred votes, these rejected ballots — about 3,000 at the state level for mismatched signatures alone in 2022 — could affect the outcome of an election. | 
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