A recent survey found significant differences in individual counties’ absentee ballot rejection rates.

The survey of 11 counties by the League of Women Voters found that almost 2,200 ballots — about 3.6% of all absentee ballots cast — were rejected in the counties on Election Day last year.

But those rates could vary considerably. In Madison County, the home of Huntsville, only about 1% of ballots were rejected. In Mobile, the number rose to 8%.

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“It is a snapshot of what is really going on with the whole state,” said Kathy Jones, president of the League of Women Voters of Alabama. “When I look at the numbers, from purely a data perspective, my conclusion is that the system has some real flaws in the way that it operates.”

The survey excluded most counties in Alabama, so it is difficult to extrapolate the attrition rate to the rest of the state. The election officials from the various counties surveyed did not state why ballots were excluded.

State law outlines the rules over which absentee ballots must be set aside and not counted, but the Alabama’s Secretary of State’s Office gives county boards of registrars wide latitude for setting policies related to absentee ballots, which can lead to disparities between counties in which absentee ballots get counted and which don’t.

Alabama is one of 17 states that does not allow voters to fix errors on their ballots prior to Election Day, according to Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank based in Colorado. That, coupled with the state’s exacting rules pertaining to absentee ballots, can lead to voters getting rejected.

Democrats introduced legislation to allow people to cure ballot affidavits that would allow election officials to be removed from the envelope and placed into the voting machine, but the bill did not move out of committee this year.

In interviews, three ballot managers said that the decision for whether to reject or accept an absentee ballot envelope is made by a poll worker who observes each of the ballots, but that decision is not discretionary.

“You fill out the form and check boxes, and then you are supposed to sign,” said Jimmy Bell, the absentee election manager for Conecuh County, where the rejection rate was about 3%. “Then you have to put the right district. It was just some stuff that they did not do.”

Poll workers may not verify the identity of the person who signed the affidavit but check whether the person actually signed the affidavit envelope required by Alabama law. For most of the ballots, it is clear if the voter made an error, and they are unable to accept the ballot to be counted as part of the election.

The registrar of voters for each county, however, may have individual process for dealing with ballots with discrepancies.

“Put the ballot that you don’t have an objection to in this pile, put the ballot that you have an objection to in this other pile,” Bell says to his poll workers. “Then everybody has to rule on it. One person doesn’t rule, the way I do it.”

Other places are slightly different.

“If there is ever any question, they get together and look at it,” said Brian York, the absentee election manager for Talladega County, where the rejection rate was 2.7%. “That is my office, I don’t know about anywhere else. If one of the poll workers has a question, if it looks unusual, they are going to ask another poll worker.”

Messages seeking comment were left with the Mobile County Probate Office.

Voting by absentee ballot in Alabama is difficult. The state requires voters to provide a reason for voting absentee. Voters must then navigate a series of rules and procedures that, should they miss even one, would invalidate their entire ballot.

Alabama also requires voters to finish ballot applications at least seven days before an election, and the ballots themselves must be received at the elections office by noon the day of the election.

That is different from other states, according to Christian Grose, a professor of political science and international relations at the University of Southern California who studies the election process.

“Arizona allows you to mail in your absentee ballot,” he said. “As long as it is postmarked by the election, officials will count it even if it arrives a few days later.”

Arizona’s acceptance and count rate was 99.6%. The rate for Massachusetts, a state largely dominated by Democrats, was 98.8% in the 2022 midterms.

Researchers say ballot curing is the key difference between those states and Alabama.

Curing a ballot is a two-step process in which voters submit their absentee ballots that are then reviewed by election officials to ensure the person voting is registered to vote and that person who cast the ballot is the same person who received the ballot.

“States like that, Arizona is one, California is one, a number of western states, that allow people to more actively say, ‘Yes, that was my ballot, not fraud,’ allows you to still have election integrity to protect against fraud, but still gives people a chance to confirm that it was, in fact, their signature and it just changed,” Grose said.

This would help with younger voters who traditionally have lower rates of turnout than the rest of the electorate. A study published by the MIT election lab in 2021 found that ballot curing cuts rejection rates almost in half.

Several lawmakers introduced several bills aimed at increasing voter turnout and enhancing opportunities for voters to participate in elections within this cycle.

HB 97, sponsored by Rep. Kenyatte Hassell, D-Montgomery, during the current session, would have introduced a system of ballot curing in Alabama. The bill did not advance during the session.

“People have been doing this for the past 10 years in the voting cycle,” said Hassell, who has introduced the legislation in previous sessions. “Their vote never counted because they didn’t know they made those mistakes, of not signing one particular piece of paper, or not checking a box, or something, of whatever it could be to not have their absentee ballot count.”

Currently, when an election official receives an absentee ballot from a voter, the absentee ballot may not be removed from the affidavit envelope if it is defective. Hassell’s legislation would have required the absentee election manager to let a voter cure the ballot affidavit to address the problem.

“I did a lot of campaigns, and we would count absentee ballots,” Hassell said. “We would say, ‘This person voted by absentee, and the person said that he supported the candidate.’ So, we would count the vote. We counted absentee ballots, but then you turn around and you don’t see the results, you don’t see the correct number of absentee ballots cast. You say, ‘Something is not right. There is a problem.’”