Utah Supreme Court Provides Narrow Interpretation to Government Agency's Right to Reject Electronically Signed Documents

Recently, the Utah Supreme Court released an opinion, saying that state election officials must accept online petition signatures to qualify individuals for the ballot. In March, Utah Lt. Gov. Greg Bell rejected a nominating petition from Farley Anderson, an independent gubernatorial candidate, saying that state law did not allow for eSignatures. Anderson's petition included more than 150 electronic signatures on his petition. In a 15-page, unanimous ruling [Anderson v. Bell, No. 20100237 (Utah June 22, 2010)] issued as voters went to the polls for primary elections, justices stated:

A signature under (Utah law) does not require a signor to physically handle a piece of paper and sign her name with a pen. An electronic signature is sufficient to satisfy the election code.

Ken Moyle, DocuSign's Chief Legal Officer and Public Policy Chair for the Electronic Signature and Records Association, commented:

This case is a home run for removing government barriers to electronic signatures. In particular, the court has narrowly interpreted a government agency's right to reject electronically signed documents. There are many federal, state and local agencies today that have told consumers to wait for a rulemaking to “allow” something that is already allowed under the law. The impact on DMVs, county recorders and secretaries of state could be enormous.

Also very enlightening is the way the court eloquently and brutally exposed the weakness of the common argument about fraud:

The Lt. Governor ... contends that electronic signatures attached to a certificate of nomination lack 'apparent authority' as genuine signatures. This position is based on a theory that a holographic signature is self-authenticating because the reviewing party may merely look at the signature and see that someone put pen to paper to sign their name. In contrast, an electronic signature lacks apparent authority, because it appears as a typed list of names.... We are unpersuaded that an electronic signature presents special concerns regarding candidate fraud; a candidate could as easily handwrite or type fraudulent names onto a certificate of nomination.

Moreover, electronic signatures may be a better deterrent to candidate fraud because an electronic signature incorporates readily verifiable personal, but non-public, information. For instance, the signors of Mr. Anderson's petition apparently had to enter a security code that corresponds to the last four digits of their drivers license number before their signature would be counted.

This is a Utah decision, so it is not binding precedent for the rest of the country. But it reads well onto the interpretation of UETA in 46 other states.