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Voter Question: Will My Signature Disqualify My Absentee Ballot?

WSHU asks listeners to send us their questions about the upcoming election. The newsroom recently got an email from a listener in Woodbury, Conn., who worried her voter registration signature on file was decades old. She wondered if her vote could be disqualified if the signature on file wouldn’t match her signature on her absentee ballot.

Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill says in her state, election workers do not invalidate absentee ballots based on voter signatures. Merrill says election officials have other ways to verify voter identity.

“People can be sure it does not matter in Connecticut whether your signature is the same," Merrill says. "I mean you might want to go back and change it at some point, but obviously signatures change over time. So that is not a concern here."

Merrill says unless there was a very narrow race that required a recount, the voter signature on file would not be compared with the signature on the ballot.

"If there is a concern ever, going back to look at someone’s signature would have to be ordered by a judge in a very close case.”

Check out WSHU’s2020 Voter Guideand fill out our survey. We’ll follow up on your questions about the election.

Cassandra Basler, a former senior editor at WSHU, came to the station by way of Columbia Journalism School in New York City. When she's not reporting on wealth and poverty, she's writing about food and family.