On Your Honor

Part 5 of 7

In an ideal world, we could be confident that all people are honest and trustworthy at all times. But that is not the world we live in, so we have laws, barriers, fences, and guardrails.

It is therefore a great mystery why California has created an electoral system that operates without the necessary barriers, fences or guardrails, instead of the On Your Honor vote-by-mail system used to destroy election integrity in our state.

Parts 1-4 in this article series discussed California’s “on your honor” policies of

• lack of citizenship verification
• unmaintained voter rolls
• universal mailing of ballots
• steering voters to return their ballots through ways that operate outside the view of observers and the public

The above State policies cause county elections offices to process millions of ballots before they can verify the legitimacy of the submitted mail-in ballot.

In 2022, approximately 80+ percent of all ballots

cast were mail-in ballots that needed processing.

Ballot processing is multi-step process that is very time and labor-intensive.

California subjects ballots to multiple opportunities for error, carelessness, incompetence or intentional wrongdoing that can lose, alter or disqualify legitimate ballots while failing to filter out those cast illegitimately or illegally.

One of the most significant steps in ballot processing is signature verification, marketed in a way that convinces voters that this process will ensure only lawful ballots are counted.

But, as they say, the devil is in the details and a closer look at the regulations surrounding this “verification process” make it far less reassuring.

• Signatures on the ballot envelope are no longer required to “match” the signature of the actual voter.

• The Secretary of State’s arguably illegal “emergency” regulations, which the legislature hurried to translate into law, now require signatures to simply be “compared to an electronic signature” and

• no matter how dissimilar, the comparison “shall be liberally construed in favor of the voter.”

Perhaps nowhere is the On Your Honor system better exemplified than this statement in the emergency regulations (now law) first imposed in September 2020:

“…comparison of a signature shall begin with the basic presumption that the signature… is the voter’s signature”.

• There is a long list of provided handwriting characteristics that processors may use to determine whether a signature “compares” (qualities such as slant, spacing and letter formation).

• However, each county determines the definition of “compares.” Some counties require three points of similarity, some two and many only ONE.

• Though the law requires further scrutiny for signatures that show “multiple, obvious and significant differences,” almost all signatures are accepted without real scrutiny.

• EIPCa observers have reported that if the mandated “one-to-three-point comparison” is verified…. multiple, obvious and significant differences will not cause the signature to be challenged.

• Thus, signatures clearly not written by the same individual are accepted.

• EIPCa observers have observed election workers:
  • not verify the signature at all
  • conduct only a cursory comparison
  • accept signatures that clearly do not compare with the signature on file

It is not possible to overstate the significance of this problem because:

• Hundreds of thousands of questionable ballots are in circulation due to unmaintained voter rolls.

• The on-your-honor citizenship verification allows anyone to vote in someone else’s name.

• Ballot harvesters can drop off ballots (legitimate or illegitimate) with no chain of custody requirements.

• Signature verification procedures are so weak as to be virtually useless.

• Bad actors may submit fraudulent ballots, alter ballots, forge signatures or dispose of “inconvenient” ballots without detection.

California law and regulations make it possible (probable) for large numbers of ineligible voters to vote, as well as for harvesters and other would-be manipulators to submit invalid ballots that will be counted.

Other issues creating chaos in the ballot processing arena include:

• Ballots deemed damaged or unreadable by tabulating machines must be duplicated in a process that is not standardized and often poorly supervised.

• This includes ballots damaged in handling or by the voter, voting choices sent in on regular paper or sample ballots and remote access vote by mail ballots.

• Multiple ballots received in a single envelope must by law be counted, provided that the same number of signatures appears on the return envelope.

• The fact is there is often no way to match the extra signatures with a signature on file.

Starting with the “On Your Honor” presumption that all ballots are legitimate lowers the vigilance of election officials and opens up the possibility of invalid votes, ineligible people voting in our elections, and/or inconsistencies between counties.

These problems have destroyed election integrity

by allowing invalid votes.

Please stay tuned for our next article in this continuing series of On Your Honor.

pdf of article 

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On Your Honor part 5 of 7     ©Election Integrity Project®California, Inc. copyrighted 2023