King County Elections (KCE) currently serves more than 1.4 million voters and, like all counties in Washington, conducts their elections mostly through the mail. They have long known that using signatures to verify mail ballots works for many of those voters, but not all.
Research has shown that some voters of color, younger and older voters, and voters who speak English as a foreign language have their signatures challenged at higher rates than others. In addition, signatures can present a barrier to voting for some disabled voters.
KCE wanted to offer an alternative to signature verification that was a more accessible and more inclusive way for those voters to verify their ballot and have their vote counted. To test any alternative to signature verification in an actual election, KCE first needed a legislation change at the state level.
Why USDR?
KCE wanted their advocacy efforts to legislators to be backed by voter research. They also wanted voters who might otherwise have their signature challenged to be confident enough in any alternative to try it out. USDR volunteers were able to provide the product and technology leadership KCE needed to thoroughly vet their options and inform their decisions with research.
Our Approach
USDR put together a comprehensive research effort to identify and test alternatives that would make voting more accessible while maintaining election security. Through user research and prototype testing, the team worked to answer a critical question: what verification methods would voters actually trust and use?
Ideation workshops
USDR conducted ideation workshops with King County, brainstorming potential alternatives to signature verification and leading collaborative discussions around how feasible, how usable, and how effective each proposal might be.
Those workshops produced a short list of possible alternatives that King County was best prepared to implement. Next they needed to find out which of those alternatives voters were most likely to adopt.
Research planning
USDR created a voter research plan to find out which alternatives voters would be most likely to adopt and why. KCE recruited 28 active registered voters, with a focus on disabled voters, young voters with inconsistent or no set signature, voters over the age of 70, immigrant communities for whom signatures are not common and/or voters for whom English is a second language, and voters who had previously had their ballots challenged.
Interviewing voters
King County staff interviewed those voters and walked them through four potential alternatives using paper and online prototypes. The first prototype was a mock ballot that included a QR code in the corner. Scanning that QR code took interview participants to a Google Form. That Google Form was another prototype USDR and KCE developed together that closely approximated the experience a voter would go through to verify their ballot online instead of signing it.
After the voter finished walking through each alternative, interviewers asked them to rate how easy or difficult they found that option and how confident they were that it would work for them.
Recommendations
Based on the ideation workshops and what we learned from that voter research, USDR recommended piloting one of two potential alternatives:
- providing a state or other ID number (e.g., a driver’s license number) via an online portal
- entering a one-time password sent to a previously registered phone number
Practices Used
- User research
- Paper/low-fidelity prototyping
- Product management
The Impact
USDR’s voter research and recommendations helped KCE advance their advocacy efforts. In 2024, the Washington State Legislature passed a new law that allows counties to test alternatives to signature verification during certain elections.
When it was time for KCE to pilot an alternative, USDR’s research-backed recommendations helped them move quickly and confidently into implementation for the April 2025 Special Election. They piloted asking voters to “pre-verify” using a Washington state identification number or the last four digits of their SSN entered into an online portal developed in partnership with a trusted vendor and the Office of the Secretary of State.
As a result of their outreach efforts, 2.67% of all ballots counted during the April Election used the alternative verification method. This percentage was significantly higher for military and overseas voters who chose to return their ballots electronically, with 60% of those voters choosing to use the alternative verification method.
The final signature challenge rate of 0.45% was the county’s second lowest in more than a decade. Feedback from voters who verified with this alternative has also been overwhelmingly positive, with 91.52% of surveyed voters indicating that they would go through the process again in a future election.
Based on this initial success, King County Elections will now use the lessons learned and feedback received to make the alternative an even more accessible and intuitive experience for their voters in future elections.
The Team
Many thanks to our volunteers who worked with King County Elections on this project:
- Amanda Cripps, product management
- Michael Radwin, engineering lead
