Well, there’s been another snag in the 2024 United States presidential election: a bunch of Gen Zers apparently don’t know how to sign their names and it’s causing a bit of delay when it comes to counting the ballots.
Not something that I had on my bingo card, but considering we’re living in a digital world now, it kinda makes sense.
Everybody is still anxiously waiting to find out whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will become the next US President (it’s looking likely to be Trump), but swing state Nevada has seen a bunch of ballots be rejected due to signature issues.
Francisco Aguilar, the Nevada Secretary of State, says results will take a while to be revealed because signatures on mail-in ballots don’t match the signatures held on the voter registration database.
He told the New York Times that “young people” aren’t generally focused on creating signatures “these days”, so their votes are being rejected.
People have until 12 November to fix any issues, so the result from Nevada may not be known for quite a while yet.
“It’s mostly the fact that young people don’t have signatures these days,” Aguilar said.
“And when they did register to vote through the automatic voter registration process, they signed a digital pad at the DMV, and that became their license signature.”
Aguilar noted that over 18,500 ballots in Clark County had been rejected, where Las Vegas lies.
In another statement, the Nevada Secretary of State said the signature problem doesn’t lie solely with Gen Z.
“Youth voter engagement is something that I’ve been passionate about for my entire time in office, but the need for signature cure goes beyond youth,” he said. “Older voters who may sign their names differently throughout the course of their lives, voters who have recently gotten married but haven’t updated their name on their voter registration, and yes, young people who may not have a set signature developed yet.
“And since the passage of Automatic Voter Registration, more Nevadans than ever sign their names on digital screens that may look different than their pen-to-paper signatures.”
The Clark County Election Department will undertake the arduous task of contacting voters who have had an issue with their signature, however, this will only happen if a voter has an email or phone number on file.
With how important swing states are in the US Election, this seems like a major issue. At least people are aware of it, and there’s even a nifty website where Nevada voters can check the status of their ballot.
If you’re curious to know what else is going down during the 2024 United States presidential election, check out our live blog here.
Lead image: Getty
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