The Overview

Ever had a mail ballot thrown out over a signature that didn't quite match, and wondered if there was anything you could do about it? Under AB 2604, which Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on September 27, the Secretary of State must make an electronic signature-curing system available to county election officials, letting voters address a missing or mismatched ballot-envelope signature electronically. Signature problems are a persistent source of ballot rejections: nearly 150,000 mail ballots were tossed in California's 2026 primary, and about 44,000 were set aside for signature mismatch, according to the Associated Press. ​

What the Law Does

Under existing law, elections officials compare the signature on a mail ballot's identification envelope with the voter's affidavit or registration signature and, if they don't match, notify the voter of the chance to verify it, by phone, text, or email where the official has a number or address on file. The new law, AB 2604, requires the Secretary of State to build a system that lets voters fix a missing or mismatched signature electronically, and to post data on how voters use it on the state website.

Legislative Status

Asm. Marc Berman (D) sponsored the bill, with coauthors Asm. Gail Pellerin (D) and Sen. Sabrina Cervantes (D). The Assembly passed it 58-20 on May 26.Add a new lede sentence to the first section that is punchy, conversational, and directly ties the subject matter of the article to the reader. The Senate passed it 29-10 on Aug. 30, and the Assembly concurred in Senate amendments the same day, 59-19.

Signature mismatch was the leading cause of mail-ballot rejection in California's November 2024 general election, when officials rejected 122,480 ballots statewide, about 0.9 percent of all mail ballots cast, the California Voter Foundation reported; a UCLA Voting Rights Project study found signature discrepancies were also the top reason for more than 580,000 mail-ballot rejections nationwide that same election, according to the UCLA Voting Rights Project. Protect Democracy said it supported the law, describing it as extending a similar efficiency to ballot processing, the Democracy Project reported.

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