Clerk’s Office notifying voters of ballot signature issues
Nov 12, 2018, 9:12 AM
The Salt Lake County Clerk's Office tried to emphasize the importance of signing your ballot this year, but says many ballots still came back unsigned.
SALT LAKE CITY — Every election involving mail-in or drop-off voting results in a number of ballots with signature issues. The song remains the same for Utah’s 2018 mid-term election.
“No matter what we do, as much as we try to make it clear, we redesigned the envelope, made the X red and bigger, and put a circle around it — and everything we do, they somehow miss signing it,” says Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swenson.
According to Swenson, it hasn’t been a big problem in recent years or this election. The problem, she says, is that unresolved signature issues mean uncounted votes.
As of Friday, there were around 2,000 ballots with signature issues of the nearly 368,000 Swenson’s office had processed. Those issues could be a signature which doesn’t match what is on record with a county clerk’s office or simply a voter who had forgotten to sign their ballot affidavit.
“I want every vote to count, so we do everything we can to notify them,” Swenson says.
Depending on the contact information provided on one’s ballot, anyone with an identified signature issue can expect a letter, email or phone call.
To verify if your vote has already been counted, visit vote.utah.gov.
The deadline to clear up ballot issues is November 19.
