Washington State's mail-in voting system often ends up with some of the highest voter turnout rates in the country.

Every election, some of those ballots are rejected.

Researchers found that voters of color have higher rejection rates.

What's interesting is Washington voters don't actually self-report race when they vote.

- We're a state that doesnt gather self-reported race and ethnicity.

And so the puzzle is what do you do?

- If voters aren't providing their race, how can anyone determine whether there's bias in Washington's ballot rejection system?

Well, researchers can use a method using data like someone's last name, where they live, and a computer algorithm to estimate race.

- It takes an individuals surname and we leverage their geographic location and it actually generates pretty accurate answers.

- Pretty accurate, but not perfect.

Last names aren't always indicative of racial identity.

- I like to use my own example.

My mother is Black and my dad is white.

And, uh, because of the sort of uniqueness of this central European Jewish last name, its likely to predict me as white or other.

- Although the technique isn't perfect, researchers say the method is helpful for analyzing large data sets.

It's used in economic research, health sciences... Basically, any time analysts want to understand racial disparities but don't have racial data.

- We did find evidence that voters of color and younger voters have higher ballot rejection rates than white voters and older voters.

- Researchers found that in the November 2020 general election, although the overall number of rejections were low, the ballots of Black voters were rejected about 50% more than those of white voters.

Latino and Asian American voters had their ballots rejected at about twice the rate of white voters.

The most common reason was mismatched signatures.

- We were able to understand some reasons why particular voters may have higher ballot rejection rates than others.

- Ballot materials may not be translated in a way that works for a lot of voters of color.

- Hispanic and Asian voters may have more complex surnames which make it more difficult to sign their ballot the same way every time.

- It's important to think about race and ethnic disparities in ballot rejections as a reflection of how our electoral systems operate.

- When we use data to understand how all people are experiencing something like elections, we can create solutions that will best serve all people and allow everyone, including people of color, to participate more fully in our democracy.

- Scott, Cali, Jacob and the rest of the research team are presenting this information to Washington state policymakers.

They're also sharing ideas to hopefully make sure fewer ballots are rejected.

- What we found, what we recommended, what our process was... - Things like user-friendly standardized ballot designs, a stronger role for community-based organizations, and, of course, a lot more data.