Under current New Jersey law, when a mail-in ballot is submitted, local election officials must compare the signature the voter provided on their ballot envelopes to the one on their mail-in ballot request form and voter registration form. If the officials – who are untrained in signature analysis and provided with no meaningful guidance as to how to make these comparisons – determine the signatures do not correspond, the ballot is rejected and not counted. The voter who cast that ballot is not provided with a chance to verify their ballot and have their vote count.

Signature matching is a flawed and error-prone process for verifying mail-in ballots. No two signatures – even from the same signer – are exactly alike. Factors such as age, disability, education, signing surface, and even type of pen can impact the consistency of a signature. With only two or three signature samples, it is very difficult to determine the identity of a signer, even for trained forensic handwriting experts. The unreliability of this process increases when the people evaluating voters’ signatures are not experts. In New Jersey, they are untrained and lack meaningful guidelines for how to conduct these assessments.

Under this system, certain populations of voters are at heightened risk of having their ballots rejected because of their signature variability, including voters with disabilities, elderly voters, very young voters, and voters for whom English is a second language.

Because New Jersey embraces this unreliable ballot verification mechanism, it has a constitutional obligation to provide voters with notice and an opportunity to fix ballot issues to ensure their validly cast ballots are counted.

Impact of COVID-19

Previously, New Jersey voters had a choice as to whether they wanted to cast a ballot by mail. Now, because of COVID-19, New Jerseyans no longer have a choice. By executive order, Governor Phil Murphy mandated that the May 12, 2020 elections be conducted entirely by mail. While the fate of the state’s July 9, 2020 primary and November 3, 2020 general remains uncertain with respect to what voting options will be available, it is clear that, whatever the situation is, social distancing and precautionary measures will continue to be crucially important, especially for elderly voters and voters with underlying conditions who are particularly at-risk during this crisis.

As more New Jersey voters are forced rely on the state’s vote by mail system to exercise their fundamental right to vote, more of them will be at risk of being disenfranchised because the state erroneously detects issues with their signatures.

Our Case

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is representing William Riggs, the League of Women Voters New Jersey (LWVNJ), and the NAACP of New Jersey (NAACPNJ) in a lawsuit seeking to ensure that New Jersey counts all validly cast mail ballots.

Mr. Riggs is a longtime New Jersey voter who suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, which causes him severe hand tremors. Because of the progression of his disease, Mr. Riggs can no longer reliably sign his name and does not always even recognize his own handwriting. However, because of his illness, he can no longer vote in person and relies on mail-in voting in order to exercise his constitutional right to vote.

LWVNJ is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization with members across New Jersey. LWVNJ’s work is dedicated to protecting the right to vote for all voters through advocacy, voter education, and providing direct assistance to voters.

NAACPNJ is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to securing political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights in order to eliminate race-based discrimination and ensure the health and well-being of all persons.

*Kaufman Lieb Lebowitz & Frick LLP is serving as co-counsel.

(Kaufman Lieb Lebowitz & Frick LLP is a New York City-based litigation boutique law firm with a civil rights focus)

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is representing League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and its Texas chapter in their efforts to extend the right to vote by mail to all voters in Texas’s upcoming elections this July and November, 2020, so that Texas voters will not have to choose between their right to vote and their health in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. This lawsuit challenges Texas’s restrictive eligibility criteria for requesting and casting absentee ballots, which deny a majority of Texans the ability to vote by mail—particularly Latino and younger voters.

Texas law restricts access to absentee ballots to voters who meet one of a handful of specific eligibility criteria: voters who (1) will be away from their county on Election Day and during the entire early voting period; (2) are sick or disabled; (3) are 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or (4) are confined in jail, but eligible to vote. Texas officials have threatened criminal prosecution of voters who attempt to cast mail ballots who do not meet these specific criteria, including those who would prefer to vote by mail due to fear of contracting or spreading COVID-19 by voting in person.

These policies have a disproportionate impact on Texas’s Latino community and younger voters. CLC serves as counsel for the League of United Latin American Citizens and its Texas chapter in challenging these policies.

On March 27, 2020, a lawsuit was filed in Texas state court alleging that participating in social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is “a sickness or physical condition that prevents the voter from appearing at the polling place on election day,” satisfying the requirements of Texas law.

On April 17, 2020, a state court judge in Travis County issued a written order granting a temporary injunction and enjoining Travis County and the State of Texas from rejecting mail-in ballots received from voters who elected to vote by mail based on the disability category of eligibility as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The state immediately appealed, and the Texas Attorney General’s office advised all county election officials that the state court’s ruling does not change the eligibility criteria for mail-in ballots, and that the state court’s order has no effect during the appeal. Moreover, Attorney General Ken Paxton has threatened criminal penalties for any Texas voter who attempts to follow the state court’s ruling and vote by mail claiming COVID-19 as an excuse.

In the midst of an ongoing public health crisis, the Constitution does not permit Texas to force its voters to choose between their health and their exercise of the fundamental right to vote. These restrictions and threats of prosecution fall disproportionately on Texas’s Latino population, who are particularly susceptible to infection and death from COVID-19. Latino voters in Texas are also significantly younger than the average Texas voting population, which means they are unable to avail themselves of the over-65 exception to the absentee eligibility criteria.

On April 7, 2020, the Texas Democratic Party filed a complaint in federal court challenging Texas’s restrictions on mail-in ballots, and on April 29, 2020, the party moved for a preliminary injunction. On May 11, 2020, CLC moved to intervene in the federal case on behalf of LULAC and Texas LULAC. As nonpartisan civil rights organizations committed to serving the Latino community in Texas and nationwide, LULAC and Texas LULAC are uniquely positioned to provide the court with necessary perspective on the particular burdens that the state’s extreme policies are placing on minority communities’ fundamental right to vote.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is representing NDVF, a grassroots coalition of conservatives, progressives, and everyone in between working to make elections in North Dakota serve all North Dakotans. CLC is also representing lead plaintiff Elizabeth Jane Sinner and Lois Altenburg who want to sign NDVF’s petition to get the proposed amendment on the ballot. CLC also represents Whitney Oxendahl, who wants to serve as a circulator of the petition, and Carol Sawicki, who wants to serve as a circulator of the petition and recruit others to do the same.

On May 6, 2020, CLC filed a lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs against North Dakota Secretary of State Alvin Jaeger to seek several protections for voters who wish to have their voice heard in the democratic process while also protecting their health. The suit asks the court to waive, for this petition, the requirement that each signatory sign the petition in the presence of the circulator, that each circulator sign an affidavit in the presence of a Notary Public swearing that each signatory signed the petition in the presence of the circulator, that the petition remain in the physical possession of the circulator at all times, and that the signature be a “wet” signature rather than an electronic one. In light of the global pandemic, these requirements make it nearly impossible for CLC’s clients to access the ballot and organize in support of the proposed amendment. This violates the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of North Dakota voters.

Because the proposed amendment impacts the redistricting process that follows the census, it is pivotal that CLC’s clients get it on the ballot in the 2020 election cycle. If they cannot, the next opportunity to seek fair maps will come after a new state legislative map is already drawn, effectively delaying redistricting reform until after the 2030 census. 

Additionally, the amendment institutes instant runoff voting which allows voters to pick their first-choice candidate as usual, but to also mark their second, third, and fourth choice candidates if they choose to. Then, if no candidate has a majority outright, election officials use these rankings to run an instant runoff process that results in a majority winner. The amendment also establishes an open primary, requires that ballots be transmitted to qualified military-overseas electors by the sixty-first day before an election, and requires that all voting machines produce a paper record of each vote cast and requires a ransom audit of election results.