State board seeks to cease Arkansans from e-signing voter registration kinds

In 2024, you may electronically signal paperwork to purchase insurance coverage, apply for a bank card or take out a mortgage. However e-signing a voter registration kind in Arkansas could quickly be forbidden, at the very least outdoors of a authorities workplace.

So says the workers of the State Board of Election Commissioners, which meets Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. to think about a draft rule and an related “declaratory order” on digital signatures and different points. A signature on a voter registration kind “have to be made by a moist signature or moist mark utilized to the paper kind by the voter with out the usage of a computer-generated signature or mark or computer-reproduced signature or mark,” the proposed order says.

The draft rule is available in response to efforts by a group called Get Loud Arkansas to register extra voters. Get Loud gives a digital platform for Arkansans to fill out and signal their voter registration software on-line, after which the group prints and mails the functions to elections officers. Arkansas, which has one of many lowest charges of voter participation within the nation, is one in all only a few states that also doesn’t permit voters to register on-line instantly.

The draft rule from the state board says the workaround from Get Loud is off the desk. It says digital signatures are permitted solely on voter registration kinds stuffed out at sure “registration companies,” such because the DMV, that are explicitly approved to make use of a “pc course of” underneath Modification 51 of the state structure.

That instantly contradicts an opinion from Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office earlier this month, which stated an digital signature on an official state-issued voter registration kind ought to depend the identical as a “moist” signature made with a pen. Griffin cited a 2001 regulation that declares e-signatures are legitimate and authorized for a lot of transactions. However the state board’s workers says Modification 51 trumps the 2001 regulation.

Does Modification 51 forbid e-signatures? It doesn’t. However, because it authorizes some however not all authorities companies concerned in registration to make use of a “pc course of,” the draft rule says, that suggests “pc processes” can’t be utilized in different strategies of voter registration.

“A voter registration software accomplished and submitted, apart from by means of an recognized Registration Company, can’t embody the usage of computerized signatures or marks,” it says. 

That assertion seems to go additional than merely banning e-signatures. It additionally means that an individual who fills out a voter registration kind on-line, prints it off, and indicators it with a pen would nonetheless not be correctly registered due to the forbidden use of a “pc course of” to make marks on a chunk of paper.

Chris Madison, the workers director on the State Board of Election Commissioners, stated the board will overview the draft tomorrow and resolve whether or not to undertake it as an emergency rule, change it, or ask workers to make revisions. Madison declined to touch upon the substance of the rule till the board has voted.

Requested concerning the latest legal professional normal’s opinion that claims e-signatures on voter registration kinds are OK, Madison stated, “AG opinions are nice, however that’s what they’re — opinions.”

The dispute over the validity of Get Loud’s digital platform began in February, when Secretary of State John Thurston despatched out a letter to Arkansas county clerks — the native elected officers answerable for sustaining voter data — advising them to not settle for registration kinds that had been stuffed out and signed electronically.

However county clerks have substantial authority of their very own, and a few, together with Pulaski County Clerk Terri Hollingsworth, stated they didn’t plan to comply with Thurston’s recommendation.

A spokesperson for Hollingsworth stated Monday afternoon that the workplace was nonetheless reviewing the draft rule from the state board and had no instant remark.

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