Mail-in ballot voters who don’t take the time to ensure their ballots are dated correctly will find their votes tossed in November because of a relatively new state law, Lake County’s Election Board Director is warning.
House Enrolled Act 1680 managed to snag 28 mail-in voters, or 1.5% of voters, during the May 5 primary, Michelle Fajman said. The law, written by State Representative Tim Wesco, R-Elkhart, and signed by Governor Mike Braun last year, requires that voters must sign and date their mail-in ballots with dates between the day the ballot is mailed and Election Day, she said.
If the signature date doesn’t match, the ballot is “insufficient and must be rejected,” according to the law.
Ballots, of which the Election Board office mailed out 2,386 and received back 1,879, have the election date hard-coded into the mailing label as well as the election date on the ballot itself, she said. Also, notices alerting people to make sure they dated them correctly went out with the ballots and were stapled all over the candidate board outside the office.
Among the 28 ballots deemed “insufficient,” 11 of them had no date with the signature; six wrote the same election date for both dates; one had a date that couldn’t be deciphered; five were dated before the ballot would’ve been mailed; and two people came in to the office May 5 to fix their ballot, only to have them rejected so they then could vote in-person, she said.
Another person wrote “5/20/26” for their date when they likely meant April 20 or May 2, she said. And of the rejected 28 votes, 26 of them voted in the Democratic primary and two voted in the Republican primary, she added.
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The board also receives one or two ballots from a completely different year, Fajman said; those people typically send them back either because they don’t want to destroy voting material or they still want to participate in the process even after a year.
Porter County fared better with its mail-in ballots, Porter County Election Board Deputy Director Tara Graf said, but that could’ve been luck this time around.
“Confirmed with (Porter County Election Board Director) Sundae (Schoon), luckily, we were not impacted by this change,” Graf said. “It may have been a side effect of a lower turnout for our primary, so we will see what November looks like. We had cures needed for missing signatures and some of those were also missing dates, but as far as missing dates only, we did not seem to have an issue in this past election.”
Unlike a ballot with a bad signature, an undated or wrongly dated ballot has no easy cure. According to guidance offered by the Indiana Secretary of State’s Election Division, a voter whose ballot is rejected may have up to three days before election day to come in and rectify the ballot, but typically would have to do it on Election Day itself.
“Absentee ballots where the absentee ballot counters find the voter’s affidavit does not contain an accurate date of their signature must be rejected. This applies to any absentee ballot using a ballot security envelope, whether to vote by mail, travel board, or during in-person early voting,” reads the guidance SoS Elections Co-Counsel Angela Nussmeyer sent the Post-Tribune. “A voter with a rejected ballot can go to the county election board not later than 5 p.m. on Election Day to receive the ABS-21 form. This allows them to go to their election day voting location to cast their ballot.
“There is no other cure process available in our state’s election laws for this particular issue unless the legislature acts to change it.”
Though there is somewhat of a remedy, it’s one that defeats the whole purpose of why a voter opted for the mail-in ballot in the first place, plus it adds an unnecessary step for election workers, Fajman said.
“People have valid reasons for a mail-in ballot: They’re not going to be here on May 5, they’re ill and can’t leave the house or they have transportation issues,” she said. “And when you vote on Election Day, you’re just signing and not dating your ballot, so does the date prove the signature is right on a mail-in?
“It’s a terrible, terrible, terrible law, and I’m worried about more people getting disenfranchised on this. What was the flaw in the system that these legislators felt they needed to fix?”
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.