A vote counting anachronism

So, as the SF Chronicle puts it, "Dem rout of CA GOP nearly complete ..." Challenger T.J. Cox is claiming victory in CA-21, the central San Joaquin Valley congressional seat that has long tantalized Democrats. The Dems have enjoyed a 17 point advantage in party registrations, yet couldn't close the deal until now. The incumbent GOPer David Valadao ran up a several thousand vote lead on election day, but has now fallen what is thought to be impossibly far behind in votes still being counted.

So why does it take California so long to finish counting the ballots?

Partly this is because state law encourages us to vote by mail and allows ballots postmarked by election day to be included in the tally. State law also encourages voters who encounter to questions about their ballots to cast a "provisional" vote -- and these too must be checked out by county registrars to complete the count. And so the painstaking process can take a few weeks ... all that seems a good thing.

But I find myself wondering about whether a significant social change may be eroding a main means by which ballots in these long counts are verified. The League of Women Voters explains:

Your signature must match the signature on your voter registration application form.

And there's the question: Who in our contemporary world is accustomed to using a replicable, readily recognizable signature?

I had to "sign" a receipt and a medical release form yesterday, both times on a tablet. One result looked like this:

This actually does vaguely resemble what I suspect is on my 1993 voter reg form: it clearly has two parts and, just maybe, the initial letter is a "J". But by the standards of previous times, it is hardly a "signature." When my mother first introduced me to having a tiny bank account (high school I think), I was taught to write a careful cursive signature -- after all, the bank would be verifying checks. Does anyone teach that these day? I doubt it. Why should they? A squiggle will do for nearly all transactions requiring a "signature".

Verifying voters through signatures is becoming a dying -- almost dead -- means of validating votes. I wonder what the California Secretary of State has in mind for updating this. There has to be a better way.