(CN) — A federal judge has temporarily blocked Arkansas from requiring handwritten signatures on voter registration forms, a legal victory for voting rights advocates who claim the new “wet” signature rule is unconstitutional and does nothing to maintain election integrity.
“What the court struggles to understand is how a handwritten “x” (i.e., a mark) would better protect against fraud than a signature made with a stylus on a tablet,” U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks wrote in his 52-page opinion issued Monday after a bench ruling on Aug. 29.
The ruling that preliminarily blocks enforcement of the emergency rule, which was adopted by the Arkansas Board of Election Commissioners in May and became permanent in August, prohibits any county clerk from rejecting or refusing to accept any new voter registration application based on it being signed with a digital or electronic signature.
“The court rightly recognized that requiring a handwritten signature is not material to determining a voter’s qualifications and would cause irreparable harm to voters,” said Uzoma Nkwonta, a partner at Elias Law Group which represented Get Loud Arkansas, Vote.org and two Arkansas voters whose voter registration forms were rejected for having digital signatures.
In their lawsuit, they claim the rule requiring a wet signature violates the Civil Rights Act’s materiality provision because, as they argued, a handwritten signature is immaterial to determining a voter’s qualifications.
The election commissioners and county clerks of Benton, Washington and Pulaski counties, each sued in their official capacities as enforcers of the rule, argued the rule is not unconstitutional and is necessary to create consistency as electronic signatures have been accepted by some county clerks and rejected by others.
But in his ruling, Brooks was skeptical that “the wetness of a signature” could be used by a county clerk to determine whether an applicant is qualified to vote under Arkansas law.
“County clerks ‘are advised to accept voter registration applications with any type of signature or mark,’ regardless of legibility or whether the applicant in fact makes a mark rather than a signature,” the judge wrote. “Because the wet signature rule likely results in the denial of the right to vote in violation of the materiality provision, voters in Arkansas — including individual plaintiffs — will suffer irreparable harm if a preliminary injunction is not granted.”
The election commission’s legal counsel did not respond to an emailed request for comment Tuesday morning.
Get Loud Arkansas said it has relaunched its online voter registration tool, which allows new voters to fill out and sign their voter registration application online and authorizes the organization to print and submit the form to the applicant’s county clerk. An applicant is not registered to vote until the application has been accepted by the county clerk.
The deadline to register to vote in the upcoming presidential election is Oct. 7.