To cut down on the time it takes to verify signatures for early ballots, election officials in Arizona’s largest county made a simple UI change. All it took was less scrolling.
When people in Maricopa County vote early, they sign green affidavit envelopes that are scanned into a county system; election officials then compare that signature with the voter’s signature on file. The county uses an an enterprise-built, custom system designed in-house to do the comparisons digitally, but the previous version of the software required officials to scroll down to see the signature on file.
That scroll might have taken only a few seconds, but that can add up in a county where nearly 88% of the more than 2 million ballots cast in the 2024 election were cast early. That year, Maricopa County reviewed 973,029 early ballots sent by mail, and another 631,006 early ballots returned to a vote center or drop box.
To speed up the process, the new version of the software shows signatures side by side, including a voter’s signatures from recent elections. It’s a simple change they estimate will cut down on review time per signature by about 50%. The change could also help improve accuracy, remove bias, and speed up a ballot-counting process that on average takes about 13 days to complete.
“The new system shows the three most recent signature examples we have for the voter, plus the signature on their voter registration form on the screen at the same time alongside the current signature that’s under review,” Sam Stone, chief of staff for the Maricopa County Recorder, tells Fast Company. “There is no scrolling, as the signatures can all be seen on the monitor screen at the same time.”
The updated software has other changes, too, including a new “back” button, as well as the option to note a “household exchange” if two people in the same household mistakenly signed each other’s affidavits.
To eliminate implicit bias, the new system shows signatures in isolation, rather than alongside the rest of the affidavit that would reveal a voter’s party affiliation, and it also shows real-time tracking data for reviewers to track their accuracy and speed to improve performance, Stone says.
No one signs their name the exact same way every time, and the Office of the Arizona Secretary of State recommends reviewers take into account characteristics like the type of writing (cursive versus print), the slant of writing, and overall spacing, size, and proportions to determine whether signatures are consistent. By seeing multiple instances of a voter’s signature together, all at once and at a glance, officials can make those determinations quicker and with more confidence. It’s a simple update that could make a meaningful difference in rebuilding trust in the election process.
Faith in the accuracy of elections has fallen in the U.S. over the past decade, driven largely by attitudes among Republicans as President Donald Trump falsely claimed he won the 2020 election (which he lost to former President Joe Biden), sowing distrust in voting by mail.
Local election officials have worked to rebuild trust, like one Idaho county that put all its ballots online, while in Arizona, a battleground state, county election officials livestream tabulation rooms. By improving speed and accuracy of signature verification with a simple UI fix, officials in Arizona could further build trust with voters.