On the recordMarch 6, 2019
The right to vote is sacred and fundamental. Yet across this country, in particular in my home State of Florida, voters were denied their right to vote because of penmanship. In the wake of the 2018 midterms, Florida's signature matching law was deemed unconstitutional because it allowed county election officials to reject vote-by-mail ballots for mismatched signatures, with no standards, an illusory cure process, and no process to challenge the rejection. Ballots being rejected because of perceived signature mismatch heavily affect voters already at the margins: trans and gender- nonconforming people, people with disabilities, people for whom English is a second language, military personnel, and women. I am very pleased to see that H.R. 1 would protect voters' due process rights when it comes to signature matching laws by requiring proper notice and an opportunity to cure. My amendment, amendment No. 4, builds on that by requiring States to submit a report to Congress after the end of a Federal election cycle regarding the number of ballots invalidated due to a discrepancy in a voter's signature, the attempts to contact voters to provide notice that a discrepancy exists between the signature on the ballot and the signature of the voter on the official list of registered voters, and the cure process and results. Mr. Chair, I urge a ``yes'' vote, and I reserve the balance of my time.
