He also filed SB 1950 to revise the signature verification process for early voting and mail-in ballots and create a criminal offense for violations of the law. The bill would amend state election code to create a Class A misdemeanor for a county clerk, elections administrator, or early voting clerk who doesn’t verify signatures on mail-in ballots. Signature verification of mail ballots didn’t occur in the Harris County November 2022 election, Bettencourt said, because Tatum “instructed the Signature Verification Committee that they were not to verify the identification on the application to the voter records, because [Tatum’s] staff had already done that comparison.”