Bob Edelman, who has been diligently following up on suspected double voters, sends some recently obtained images of absentee ballot envelopes. Edelman's explanation is after the jump. The punchline: this is yet one more example of the general worthlessness of "signature verification" as a ballot security measure.

(and if you're still registered as a King County "permanent absentee voter", this example should help inspire you to change your registration back to vote at the polls where you can be more confident that your vote won't be stolen).

Shelly G ONeal had a duplicate registration as Shelly G O Neal. Both registrations were credited with voting. However, the second ballot envelope was signed by Choi V Nguyen who resides at the same address as Shelly ONeal. This was not an incident of double voting as Choi Nguyen was not credited with voting in that election - the vote was probably cast in error using ONeal's extra ballot.

Signature verification is the only safeguard against mail ballot fraud. But no rational person could have honestly verified the signature on the Nguyen envelope as matching the registration signature for ONeal. Better training is not the answer.

This is not an isolated example. I have found several cases of mismatched signatures that were either obvious forgeries or where the wrong ballot was accidentally cast. The only reason these came to light is that the mismatches were for double registrants. We will never know how many other people cast someone else's ballot.