Tag Archive for: Washington Voting Rights Act

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U.S. Supreme Court Sends Washington State Legislative Map Case Back to Court of Appeals

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Alberto Lammers, alberto@uclavrp.org

U.S. Supreme Court Sends Washington State Legislative Map Case Back to Court of Appeals

WASHINGTON (October 5, 2026) — Today, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a procedural move, sent Trevino v. Hobbs back to the lower court for further review based on the April 2026 decision in Louisiana v. Callais. On behalf of Latino voters in Washington state’s Yakima Valley, Campaign Legal Center, the UCLA Voting Rights Project, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), and Morfin Law Firm, PLLC will continue to defend the rights of all Washingtonians to have an equal say in electing state legislators who best serve their community.

Following a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that affirmed the legality of a new Washington state legislative map put in place by a district court to remedy a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), two voters who had intervened in the litigation brought this case to the Supreme Court, continuing an effort to resist a fair map for Washington’s voters. On October 5, 2026, after considering the intervenors’ petition to review the case, the Supreme Court granted intervenors’ petition, vacated the previous decision and sent the case back for further review in the Ninth Circuit in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais earlier this year.

“We won this case twice already, and we intend to win again. As a result of our previous litigation, Latino voters in Yakima Valley had an equal voice in state legislative elections for the first time in decades,” said Annabelle Harless, director of redistricting at Campaign Legal Center. “Despite recent Supreme Court actions weakening the Voting Rights Act, we will continue to fight for fair maps to ensure that Latino voters in Washington State’s Yakima Valley have a fair chance to elect state legislators who best serve their community.”

“The 2021 Washington state Legislative redistricting denied Yakima and Tri-Cities Latinos the chance at equal representation, but our lawsuit remedied that in 2023,” said Ernest Herrera, MALDEF Western Regional Counsel. “Today’s Supreme Court’s orders do not change the fact that the Voting Rights Act guarantees Latinos equal opportunity to elect candidates who represent them in Washington’s state Legislature, and we will fight to keep a fair map in the Ninth Circuit.”

“Today’s order does not decide the merits of this case,” said Sonni Waknin, senior voting rights counsel at the UCLA Voting Rights Project. “We will continue to move forward and ensure that a fair map exists in Washington state.”

“I think that the lower courts got it right on the law. I sometimes dream of a perfect world, where we have fair and equal representation, and ethical governance, where elected representatives care about the needs of the entire population,” said Edwardo Morfin of Morfin Law Firm, PLLC. “But, since we do not live in a perfect world, we need to wake up and keep fighting to get closer to that dream.”

Background:

In January 2022, Campaign Legal Center (CLC), alongside co-counsel MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund), the UCLA Voting Rights Project, and attorney Edwardo Morfin of the Morfin Law Firm in Washington, sued on behalf of individual Latino voters in the Yakima Valley region, arguing that Washington’s state Legislative District 15 violated Section 2 of the VRA.

A federal judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, agreeing that the map violated Section 2 because the challenged district diluted the voting strength of Latino voters. Following this violation, a remedial map, which was drawn without any consideration of race, was implemented to allow voters in the Yakima Valley region an equal opportunity to participate in the political process.

Following the lower court’s decisions, intervenors appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in an attempt to get the fair map overturned.

The Ninth Circuit found that the intervenors lacked standing to challenge the district court’s liability ruling and affirmed that the new remedial district put in place to address the Section 2 VRA violation complies with federal law.

Following plaintiffs’ win at the Ninth Circuit, intervenors filed a petition for a writ of certiorari at the Supreme Court, seeking to overturn the Ninth Circuit’s decision.

More information about our case is available here.

ABOUT the UCLA Voting Rights Project

The UCLA Voting Rights Project was established to protect equal voting rights for all Americans through strategic litigation, social science research and policy advocacy. The VRP seeks to ensure that all individuals are afforded equal access to the electoral process and representation in governance. For more information about the UCLA Voting Rights Project, please visit vrp.ucla.edu.

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UCLA Study Finds Disparities in Mail Ballot Rejections and Evidence That Racial Cues May Influence Signature Reviews

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Alberto Lammers; alammers@luskin.ucla.edu

UCLA Study Finds Disparities in Mail Ballot Rejections and Evidence That Racial Cues May Influence Signature Reviews

Analysis of California and Washington state election data underscores the need for further research and stronger safeguards for eligible voters.

LOS ANGELES (September 14, 2026) — Young and non-White voters are substantially more likely to have their vote-by-mail ballots rejected, while experimental evidence suggests racial cues may influence the subjective decisions involved in signature verification, according to a new research brief from the UCLA Voting Rights Project (VRP).

More than 580,000 vote-by-mail ballots were rejected nationwide during the 2024 general election. Signature discrepancies were the leading reason for rejection, accounting for 59% of rejected ballots in California and 64% in Washington state.

The brief authored by Michael Herndon, a senior research fellow at the VRP, finds that the subjective process of signature verification disproportionately penalizes non-White voters and young voters in both states. In an analysis of Washington state election data, Hispanic-surnamed voters were approximately twice as likely as White voters to have their ballots rejected because of a signature mismatch. In some counties this disparity was even larger. For example, in Adams County, Hispanic voters experienced a rejection rate more than four times that of White voters between 2019 and 2024.

The research also found:

  • Young voters faced substantially higher rejection rates. Across every racial group examined in California’s 2022 general election, voters younger than 25 were considerably more likely to have their signatures rejected than voters older than 65. In Riverside County, Latino voters younger than 25 were 15 times more likely to experience a signature rejection.
  • Racial cues influenced signature-matching decisions in controlled experiments. In one experiment, participants accepted signatures assigned White-sounding names at a rate of 60.5%, compared with 55% for signatures assigned Hispanic-sounding names—even though the names were randomly assigned and the underlying signatures were comparable.

The experiments did not examine actual election workers, but the findings raise questions about whether personal biases can affect VBM ballot verification, especially considering that the process varies by county, is done under time constraints, and happens at a massive scale. 

“A signature isn’t just a mark on a page; it also carries with it a name, which can very easily signal a person’s gender, race, religion or other personal characteristics,” said Herndon. “Decades of research tell us that people respond to these name-based cues, and they do it most when a task is ambiguous and left to their own judgment—which is exactly the case for signature verification.”

Herndon argues that the growing use of vote-by-mail makes closer examination of signature verification increasingly important. Because voters are not physically present when their ballots are reviewed, local election officials typically verify their identity by comparing the signature on the ballot envelope with signatures in the voter’s registration record. Voters whose ballots are flagged for missing or mismatched signatures must complete a curing process before their ballots can be counted, though not all states offer this remedy

The brief recommends evaluating differences in signature-review procedures and rejection rates across counties, broadening recruitment for the elections workforce, expanding automatic ballot curing and reassessing whether signature matching should remain the default method for verifying mail ballots. It also calls for further research into which technologies, training practices and administrative workflows make ballot review more accurate and less susceptible to bias.

Read the full brief here.

About the UCLA Voting Rights Project

The UCLA Voting Rights Project was established to protect equal voting rights for all Americans through strategic litigation, social science research, and policy advocacy. The VRP seeks to ensure that all individuals are afforded equal access to the electoral process and representation in governance. For more information about the UCLA Voting Rights Project, please visit vrp.ucla.edu.

 

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How Racial Biases Can Affect Vote-by-Mail Ballot Rejection

Author: Michael Herndon, Ph.D. | Senior Research Fellow, UCLA Voting Rights Project | September 2026

Evidence from California and Washington shows that non-White voters are disproportionately more likely to have their vote-by-mail ballots rejected – and that this problem may be rooted in the racial biases of election officials, rather than voter deficiencies.

THE BOTTOM LINE

580,000+

Rejected Ballots Annually

4x

Higher Rejection Rate for Non-White Voters

10x

Higher Rejection Rate for Young Voters
  • Vote-by-mail (VBM) now accounts for over a third of ballots cast nationally, and in California, 89 percent of voters cast their ballots this way.
  • Signature verification is the single largest source of ballot rejection. In California and Washington, non-matching signatures accounted for 59 and 64 percent of all rejected ballots in the 2024 general election respectively.
  • Non-White voters are disproportionately affected. Studies using real election data from California and Washington find that non-White voters and young voters are significantly more likely to have their ballots rejected for signature discrepancies, late arriving ballots, and undeliverable ballots.
  • Personal biases can affect signature adjudication. Controlled experiments suggest that the average person is more likely to be accepting of White appearing signatures than non-White appearing signatures, even when controlling for signature quality, complexity, etc. Participants in these experiments were also observed to be influenced by their personal racial beliefs.
  • Closing these demographic gaps in ballot rejection requires scientifically backed administrative reforms. To this end, more research is needed on the effectiveness of different technologies, training materials, workflows, etc. on making ballot rejection more precise and less biased.

THE PROBLEM

Vote-by-mail was designed to make voting easier, and for most voters it does. But every general election, more than 500,000 mail ballots are rejected nationwide — and research suggests that at minimum 80 percent of these ballots belong to eligible voters.This matters because in close elections, wrongly rejected ballots can make the difference between winning and losing. For example, in 2024, California’s 13th Congressional District was decided by just 187 votes, in a race where more than 6,000 ballots were flagged for missing or non-matching signatures.The 2004 Washington gubernatorial election was decided by just 129 votes while simultaneously rejecting thousands of VBM ballots. Hundreds of state and local elections are decided by similarly thin margins every cycle, reminding us of the power and impact that even a single wrongfully rejected ballot can have.

The most common reason ballots are rejected is a signature mismatch: an election worker’s judgment call that the signature on a ballot envelope doesn’t sufficiently resemble the signature on file. Unlike a missed deadline, signature verification is a subjective determination made in seconds, often with only minimal training compared to the 2 years required to be a certified forensic document examiner. Meanwhile, election skepticism is alarmingly high – especially among Republicans.

Continue reading How Racial Biases Can Affect Vote-by-Mail Ballot Rejection

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