Show any evidence whatsoever that the type of voter fraud you're talking about is a problem. Until then, the talking point is worthless.
Show up at a polling station with fake ID or PII? Then at another polling station with another piece of fake ID or PII? What's your plan for voting staff checking the records, and finding out that 'you' already cast a ballot at that station?
This kind of fraud is incredibly risky, and does not scale (And is trivial to combat). Election fraud by the process of disenfranchising voters (or rigging electronic voting machines,) on the other hand, scales incredibly well.
The former is not happening, and would be incredibly difficult to pull off, at great risk to the perpetrators. The latter is happening, and is comparatively trivial to pull off (And nobody goes to jail, when they get caught.)
Voter fraud is a red herring.
Generally, you register to vote. As long as you input plausible information and a real address you can receive mail at, you are likely to get on the rolls. Once you get on the rolls, you just show up at the polling station and tell them who you are (no ID required), they look for the name in the book, mark you as having voted, and you go vote.
Several years ago they did pass a law federally requiring an ID if you couldn't provide the last-four of an SSN or a driver's license, though, if you're a new voter. Not sure how that works if e.g., you're Amish and don't have an SSN or driver's license.
I doubt it's very common in a fraud sense (though there are probably a lot of people who aren't supposed to be able to vote who end up voting), but either way, it's a difficult problem, probably impossible, to solve without impinging on the rights of the voting public. Voter ID laws disenfranchise people, sharing too much data with the feds has privacy risks, cleaning up the rolls inevitably affects legitimate voters...there's no good way to solve the problem.
Voter rolls are public. You can't see how someone voted, but you can see if they voted.
Nobody is engaged in a conspiracy to vote hundreds of times, but are a lot of people voting in various technically illegal ways? Sure.
Have you registered to vote in the United States? Records are corroborated.
Remember, voter rolls are public. My New York City record lists my name, address, party affiliation and voter district information. Anyone can challenge this based on public information, e.g. social media posts, court records, employment records, et cetera, or absolutely nothing.
In New York, you literally write a letter and the Board of Elections opens an investigation. Lots of people do this every year, and the problem isn't them finding anything useful. The problem is them (a) burning tax dollars and (b) knocking off the rolls those who forgot to report minor address changes, e.g. moving within the same building.
> a lot of people voting in various technically illegal ways
Many have looked for evidence of this. Zero has been found. It's a high-cost, low pay-off gamble. Will some people be idiots? Sure--there's a small handful every election. Is this even remotely of concern? Absolutely not.
You have to accept a vote whether that voter appears on your roll or note (if unregistered, a provisional ballot is cast; it's generally not opened unless the sum total of provisionals can sway a race).
You can't challenge a signature for invalidity, and you can't pull that ballot even if it is later found to be invalid.
Even if a fraudulent vote was cast in the name of a real voter, and that real voter shows up later to vote (and has photo ID), his/her ballot turns into a provisional ballot, and the first-cast, bogus ballot is never retracted.
In New York any poll worker can challenge a signature for validity. Those ballots are specially marked and subject to individualised scrutiny.
This thread has got to have the highest-confidence totally-wrong assertions I’ve seen on Hacker News in a long time.
> his/her ballot turns into a provisional ballot, and the first-cast, bogus ballot is never retracted
What do you think happens to provisional ballots? They’re provisional because they’re specially handled. If a double vote occurs on a name, that’s certainly investigates (again, in New York).
There's no funding or conspiracy involved.
These statistically-irrelevant edge cases have been addressed in other [1][2] comments. You're beating a dead, incorrigible horse in the face of documented evidence.
they end up wiping out swaths of real, actual voters
If you're going to conduct voter fraud, the count is your target. At that stage, IDs are irrelevant. (Even then, there are multiple precincts in multiple states with lots of random, independent volunteers and elected representatives puttering about.)
Being skeptical is fine. Using skepticism of a low-probability unsubstantiated claim (voter fraud) to detract from a proven problem (voter suppression) is at best irrational.
http://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/heritage-explains...
(I realize that's from the Heritage Foundation - I'm not particularly conservative - it's just the first decent list I came across while Googling.)
Let's take these 3:
""" False registrations: Voting under fraudulent voter registrations that either use a phony name and a real or fake address or claim residence in a particular jurisdiction where the registered voter does not actually live and is not entitled to vote.
Duplicate voting: Registering in multiple locations and voting in the same election in more than one jurisdiction or state.
Fraudulent use of absentee ballots: Requesting absentee ballots and voting without the knowledge of the actual voter; or obtaining the absentee ballot from a voter and either filling it in directly and forging the voter’s signature or illegally telling the voter who to vote for. """
Ok. Pretend I am a hostile nation-state. I can find a list of registered voters online (from some hack, because in 2020 PII is everywhere). I identify a number of key districts in the upcoming US election, and the names of some individuals living in those districts. I acquire some mail-in ballots, and cast votes using those names and details (say, SSNs). I'll just ignore whether or not the person has already voted. (To summarize: my hypothetical attack uses methods (2) Duplicate voting and (3) Fraudulent use of absentee ballots above, not actually method (1) False registrations.)
Is that so hard to imagine doing? I don't think so: particularly not for a nation state.
"Voter fraud" can be when a particular person votes twice in an election -- that's possible but not worth the risk for the individual. In this scenario there's not much real risk to whoever is carrying out the attack.
It doesn't even really matter if you get "caught" (detected). (Getting "caught" (punished) is hard to imagine.) The goal is just to undermine the election. To win, all you have to do is throw the result into doubt.