The jurisdictions are now very sensitive to the reasons for disqualifying absentee ballots, Dr Perse said. “While they were processing very few of them, those reasons may not seem significant. But now that thousands of ballots have been disqualified due to equine enforcement of the rules, they are more likely to provide a strict and consistent application of those guidelines. “
Indeed, many election officials are running extra miles to accommodate voters. In Davidson County, Nashville, election activists used pink highlighters to underscore the often ignored signature lines on the approximately 37,000 absentee ballots they sent to voters. As of last week, officials had marked only 11 ballots that lacked proper signatures, County Elections Director Jeff Roberts said.
If the rate of disqualified ballots has undoubtedly dropped in some jurisdictions, then Daniel A. Smith, a leading expert on mail voting, from the University of Florida, offers a completely different explanation of why.
In Florida, where 1.3 percent of mail ballots were thrown in 2018, the rejection rate on Monday was just 0.3 percent. Mr Smith said: “It’s not like we’re rejecting fewer ballots. “That is, we get the lowest rate of treating ballets” – that is, improved and eligible for calculation.
This is especially true in war-torn states like Florida and Georgia. In both states, troops from political parties, candidates and advocacy groups are pushing voters whose ballots were rejected by telephone calls and emails to urge them to correct their mistakes. In Florida, where nearly 32,000 ballots were rejected in 2018, only 14,072 ballots were cast as of Monday, with two-thirds of the signatures missing.
“In every county, we’re putting a lot of effort on the ground,” Mr. Smith said. “And we’ve never seen anything like it in a previous election.”
