US election: More than 13,000 Nevada ballots rejected over signature matching

More than 13,000 mail-in ballots cast in the US presidential election in Nevada have been rejected due to issues with signatures, officials have said.

Nevada's Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said on Tuesday that the problem is linked to young voters' signatures not matching those on their driving licenses.

He said: “It’s mostly the fact that young people don’t have signatures these days.

"When they did register to vote through the automatic voter registration process, they signed a digital pad at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and that became their license signature.”

Signatures on postal ballots must be matched with a signature in a voter database, otherwise they may be rejected. If this happens, voters have the opportunity to "fix" their ballots, in a process known as curing.

The amount of time a voter has to verify their ballot depends on which state they live in - in Michigan, they have until the third day after the election. In Nevada, they have until November 12.

In Clark County, more than 11,300 needed curing, along with more than 1,800 in Washoe County - far higher than the amount of ballots which had to be fixed in 2020 and 2022.

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Aguilar said: “When you start to look at the data and you start to realize how high it is, it makes you nervous, because, again, these races are so close, the margins are so slim, that I don’t want to look at the numbers tonight and know that we have to wait for ballots to be cure.

“We need to ensure that every voter’s voice is heard.”

Guidance is being sent to counties across Nevada to make sure the process to cure signatures was being equally applied across the state, Aguilar's office said.

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