Under Washington state law, for your ballot to be counted the signature on your ballot’s return envelope must match the signature that’s on your voter registration record. Each election, many ballots are returned either without a signature or with a signature that doesn’t quite match.
Don’t let that be you.
Here are a few tips to help make sure your signature passes the check and your ballot is counted:
- If you registered to vote online using VoteWA.gov, your voting signature comes from the Department of Licensing, so check the signature on your driver’s license or state ID and try to match that as closely as you can.
- Your signature does not need to be written in cursive or nicely or even legibly, it just needs to match the signature that’s on file. If you have a chicken scratch signature, that’s okay!
- If you have no idea what signature you might have used, or it has been a while and your signature has changed, you can update your voter signature using a signature update form. Download the form, print it, sign it, and send it to your election office. Kitsap County residents can download a signature update form here: https://www.kitsapgov.com/auditor/Documents/SigUpdate.pdf
- Track your ballot status to ensure that it gets counted. You’ll find the ballot tracker on VoteWA.gov at https://voter.votewa.gov/WhereToVote.aspx
If there is an issue with your signature not matching or the ballot return envelope was not signed, your county’s election office will send you a letter to the address on record. If you receive one of these letters, you’ll need to complete and return the correction form to your county’s election office by the due date to make sure your ballot is counted.
