Imagine the feeling: you carefully fill out your mail ballot at the kitchen table, sign the envelope, and drop it into the mailbox. Then, a few days later, you receive a notification that election officials are questioning whether the signature on that envelope is really yours. For many voters in Maricopa County this election season, that has become a real and stressful possibility. The controversy is centered on a dispute between Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap and ABC15 data reporter Garrett Archer. Heap has publicly accused Archer of spreading “election misinformation” about the signature verification process. Archer counters that the recorder’s office removed certain identifiers that were once visible to signature verifiers, and that this change has caused mail ballot signature rejection rates to rise. Heap does not deny that something was removed. He simply says Archer is describing it the wrong way. According to Heap, the only identifiers taken away from verifiers’ screens were the voter’s personally identifying information, including party affiliation. That means verifiers no longer see whether a voter is a Republican, Democrat, or independent when they are comparing signatures. Heap insists that those details were never necessary for the process. “Put simply, the verifiers should not know anything about a voter other than whether the current signature matches the other historic signatures for the individual,” he said. He added that this approach protects all voters and has no bearing on rejection rates. That final claim is exactly what the fight is about. Does removing information like party affiliation make the process fairer, or does it make it harder for verifiers to do their jobs? And does it explain why more mail ballots have been flagged in recent elections? For voters, the answers to those questions matter far beyond the political debate. They affect whether a ballot is accepted or sent back for a fix.
To understand why this dispute matters, it helps to know what signature verification actually involves. Election officials do not simply glance at two signatures and decide if they look the same. They compare handwriting characteristics—slant, letter spacing, pressure, shape, loops, and pen strokes—against the signatures in a voter’s registration history. It is a human process, and humans are not perfect. Signatures change over time. They change with age, illness, injury, medication, mood, and even the kind of desk or chair a person is sitting in. A rushed signature can look completely different from a careful one. A person who signs with a shaky hand after a medical procedure might be mistaken for someone whose signature is being forged. At the same time, a skilled forge can resemble a genuine signature closely enough to fool an untrained eye. That is why the people who do this work are supposed to be trained and attentive. In the past, the screens used by these verifiers reportedly included more than just signatures. They also included certain identifiers, and among those identifiers was the voter’s party affiliation. Archer says this extra information gave verifiers useful context. Removing it, in his view, forces verifiers to make decisions with less information, which naturally makes them more cautious. More caution means more rejections. Heap sees it very differently. He argues that party affiliation is exactly the kind of information that should never play a role in verifying a signature. If a verifier knows that a voter belongs to the same political party, they might unconsciously give that voter the benefit of the doubt. If the voter belongs to the opposite party, they might hold the signature to a stricter standard. The process should be blind to politics. It should be about handwriting and identity, not about political labels. Even if no verifier ever acted on bias, the simple presence of that information could create the appearance of bias. Heap’s decision to remove it is rooted in the idea that impartiality matters as much as accuracy. But Archer’s warning is that an impartial process can still produce more rejections if it is missing helpful context. Both men are looking at the same change and seeing different consequences.
Archer says Heap’s own confirmation of the change only strengthens his argument. In a post following Heap’s statement, Archer wrote, “The removal of identifiers will result in an increase in signature rejections. We’ve already seen this in previous elections this year.” To support that claim, he shared data showing Maricopa County’s signature rejection rate over several years. In 2021, there were 576 rejections, a rate of 0.1 percent. In 2022, there were 1,800 rejections, and the rate remained at 0.1 percent. In 2023, there were 1,425 rejections, and the rate rose to 0.3 percent. In 2024, the number jumped to 7,220 rejections, with the rate still listed at 0.3 percent. Then, in 2025, there were 5,903 rejections, and the rate rose to 0.8 percent. Archer described the most recent rate as enormous, and in raw numbers it means thousands of Maricopa County voters have received notices that their signatures did not match. Those numbers are not just statistics. Each rejection represents a person who took time to fill out a ballot, sign the envelope, and return it. Many of those people will be confused by the notice. Some will worry that their vote is lost. Others might not realize they need to take action before a deadline. The jump from 0.3 percent to 0.8 percent may sound small in percentage terms, but when hundreds of thousands of mail ballots are cast, it can mean thousands of additional voters are forced into a cure process. Archer says the timing of the increase is too obvious to ignore: the rejection rate began climbing after the county removed the identifiers. Heap says that doesn’t mean the removal caused the increase. He maintains that signature verifiers only need to compare signatures, and that party affiliation had no legitimate role in that comparison. But the data has made it easy for Archer to frame the issue in simple terms: the county changed the rules, and rejections went up. For many members of the public, that is enough to raise questions.
Some election integrity advocates, however, say the higher rejection rate is not necessarily a bad thing. They argue that a stricter signature verification process may actually be a sign that the system is becoming more honest. Merissa Caldwell, the founder of the group EZAZ, saw Heap’s statement as an admission that the old system may have been biased. In her view, the removal of party affiliation means that affidavit signatures are no longer being reviewed with bias to push signatures through that don’t match the voter’s signature attributes. In other words, the presence of a party label might have encouraged verifiers to approve questionable signatures for voters they felt aligned with, while being overly strict with voters from other parties. That bias could have been conscious or unconscious, but either way it undermines trust in the verification process. Caldwell’s point is that signature verification should not be about deciding which voters to help and which voters to scrutinize. It should be a neutral, mechanical comparison. If a signature matches, it should be accepted. If it doesn’t, it should be flagged. Removing party affiliation from the screen is a simple way to make that happen. It may result in more rejections, but those rejections are not necessarily unfair. A rejection at the signature check stage is not the same as a rejection of the ballot itself. It is an invitation for the voter to confirm their identity and prove that the ballot is theirs. The process can be stressful, but it is not a punishment. In fact, some advocates say it is exactly what should happen when a signature is questionable. Better to ask for more information than to silently accept a signature that may not belong to the voter. From that perspective, the higher rejection rate is not a sign of voter suppression. It is a sign that the system is no longer letting political bias get in the way of careful review.
For Maricopa County voters, the most important thing to understand is that a signature rejection does not mean a ballot is automatically thrown out. It triggers a cure process, and voters have until November 8 to fix the problem. They can do this through the Voter Dashboard or by calling election officials. Many voters may not know this, which is why it is so important to check the status of a ballot after returning it. Maricopa County offers text and email notifications that allow voters to track their ballot through the system. Voters who are unsure whether their ballot was accepted should not wait to find out. They can check the Voter Dashboard at any time. If a signature has been flagged, there is still time to resolve it, but only if the voter acts quickly. There is also a separate issue that has nothing to do with signature verification: the deadline for returning mail ballots. Arizona is strict about this. A ballot must be received in hand by an election official by 7 p.m. on Election Day, which is November 3. A postmark is not enough. As of Tuesday, the last day for voters to return their mail ballots through the U.S. Postal Service, Maricopa County had received mail ballots from approximately 630,000 voters. That is a large number, and many of those ballots still need to go through the verification process. If you have not yet voted, you do not need to mail your ballot. You can still drop it off at a polling location, a vote center, or an official ballot drop box. You can also vote in person. Early in-person voting ends on Friday, October 30. After that, voters can cast their ballots at their assigned polling place on Election Day. The deadlines are unforgiving, but they are also clear. Voters who take the time to check on their ballot, cure their signature if necessary, and return their ballot by the right method can make sure their voice is heard.
Underneath all the statistics and accusations, this dispute is really about public confidence in elections. Every election season, voters are asked to trust that the people counting ballots are doing so fairly. Signature verification sits at the center of that trust. If the process is too lenient, people worry that bad ballots are being accepted. If it is too strict, people worry that legitimate voters are being turned away. Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap made a change that he says removes bias and protects voter privacy. Garrett Archer says the same change is causing more voters to have their signatures rejected. Merissa Caldwell says the increase in rejections proves the system is now less political and more accurate. All three perspectives contain a piece of the truth, and that is what makes the debate so difficult to resolve. There is no perfect way to verify a signature, because signatures are not perfect. Human judgment will always be part of the process, and human judgment is never immune to error or bias. The best thing an election office can do is create a system that is transparent, gives voters a chance to respond, and does not let politics influence decisions. Removing party affiliation from the review screen is a reasonable way to work toward that goal. But it has consequences, and those consequences are playing out right now in the form of higher rejection rates. The debate over whether that trade-off is worth it will likely continue beyond this election. In the meantime, voters should focus on what they can control. Check your ballot status. Subscribe to notifications. If your signature is flagged, cure it before the deadline. Return your ballot in a way that guarantees it arrives on time. The election system will never be perfect, but it can still work for the people who understand it and act quickly. In a democracy, participation is the most important thing, and every voter deserves the chance to make sure their ballot is counted.