Young voters in the US reportedly had trouble signing their names on ballots during this week’s presidential election, the New York Times reported ahead of Tuesday’s vote, which was eventually won by Donald Trump.
According to Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, a number of mail-in-ballots in the battleground state’s most populous counties had to be rejected because of signature-matching problems.
He explained that the most frequent reason for mail-in ballot rejections was that the signatures on envelopes did not match the signatures in the voter registration database, noting that this problem was particularly common among younger voters.
On Monday evening, the Nevada secretary of state’s office reported that more than 18,000 mail-in ballots had been rejected in Clark County, home to the state’s most populous city of Las Vegas, and more than 1,800 needed fixing in Washoe County.
“It’s mostly the fact that young people don’t have signatures these days,” Aguilar told the New York Times. “And when they did register to vote through the automatic voter registration process, they signed a digital pad at DMV, and that became their license signature,” he added, noting that for many Nevadans, signing their names on digital screens may look different than their pen-to-paper signatures.
In a separate statement, Aguilar also claimed that signature issues were found not only in ballots sent in by young voters, but also by older citizens who “may sign their names differently throughout the course of their lives” and people who have recently gotten married and haven’t yet updated their name on their voter registration.
Aguilar stated that Nevada voters whose ballots had been rejected due to a signature issue have until November 12 to cure their ballots, meaning that announcement of the final results from the battleground state could still be a long way off.
As of Thursday, Nevada has counted an estimated 94% of its ballots, with Donald Trump projected to win the state’s six electoral votes with 51% compared to Kamala Harris’ 47.2%.
Both US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have already reportedly called Trump to concede the election as the Republican candidate has secured at least 292 electoral college votes, compared to 224 for Harris. It takes 270 to win the White House.