SEATTLE — Washington's system of verifying signatures on ballots before they are counted does not violate the state constitution, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

Three liberal nonprofit groups sued the state in 2022, arguing the signature checks are unconstitutional and error prone, leading to thousands of legitimate votes getting tossed out every election while doing little to suss out rare cases of actual voter fraud.

Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and county elections officials defended the signature checks, warning that scrapping them would lead to a collapse of election integrity and jeopardize the state's all-mail voting system.

In a ruling Thursday, the state Supreme Court agreed with the state, upholding the ballot-signature checks as lawful, noting efforts by elections officials to make it easier for voters to "cure" challenges to their signatures so their votes get counted.

"We conclude that at least when coupled with the increasingly expansive cure system, signature verification, on its face, does not violate our state constitution," the court wrote in a 9-0 decision led by Justice Steven González.

While upholding the constitutionality of the state's framework of signature checks, the court acknowledged that the checks cause tens of thousands of votes to be rejected in every election, raising "significant" constitutional concerns.

"Nothing in this opinion should be read to foreclose an as-applied challenge to the way signature verification has been used in specific instances or places," the court decision said.

Hobbs, in a statement, said he was pleased with the ruling.

"Signature verification has been a fundamental part of our state's vote-by-mail system for decades, helping to protect against fraud while ensuring that every eligible voter's ballot is counted," he said.

The lawsuit challenging the signature verifications was filed in King County Superior Court by the Vet Voice Foundation, El Centro de la Raza and The Washington Bus. Three King County voters who had ballots rejected because of signature mismatches also were plaintiffs. Representatives for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday's ruling.

State law requires county elections offices to examine signatures on ballot envelopes and verify they match the signature on file for the voter. If a signature looks different, elections offices send notices to voters giving them a chance to fix the issue.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case submitted evidence that supposed signature mismatches disenfranchised more than 170,000 voters between 2016 and 2022 (out of more than 37 million ballots cast), and required tens of thousands of others to jump through hoops to get their votes counted.

Rates of rejection have been higher for younger voters. White voters were also less likely to have ballots rejected than Black, Native American, Latino and Asian/Pacific Islander voters, the court decision acknowledged.

However, the court noted, the state law, on its face, "does not require election workers to disqualify a single valid ballot." When coupled with "the increasingly expansive opportunities to cure a rejected ballot" the state's law "does not exclude anyone from casting a vote," the court wrote.

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