Vote by Mail: Ballot Fraud Risk, State Laws and Trump's Claims
npr.org
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Campaign finance makes a mockery of the campaign process. Voter id laws disenfranchise more people than fraudulently vote. Gerrymandering creates unfair advantages with malicious boundaries. Regular closing of the polls disenfranchises more people than vote fraudulently.
Voter fraud might be a problem, but it's minuscule compared to fraud of the elections themselves.
I'm not convinced it is large scale enough to sway an election. It's mostly just a failure of the counties to coordinate with each other to prevent double votes.
Florida has had unrestricted absentee ballot voting by mail since 2002. Over 2.5 million Florida voters used it in the last two elections, so I think the recent noise about voting by mail is just a distraction.
I do think we need better coordination across the states. I am convinced that there are people with residences in multiple states getting more than one vote. Unfortunately, not all of the states are as transparent as Florida is with the vote data.
I noticed the "Wikipedia's list of American supercentenarians" you cite to cross reference which describes itself as "a list of the longest lived American supercentenarians according to the GRG." [0] is not an exhaustive list of all supercentenarians. For example, the wikipedia page only lists 4 people who are currently alive, but looking at Wikipedia's underlying reference [1] there's at least 7 who are validated and currently alive, and I see around another 9 who have passed away since ~2019.
Additionally, looking at Wikipedia's underlying source [1] it says "The total number Supercentenarians that we have cited above has been frequently been misconstrued in the news media as representing every single person in the world aged 110 and over. The actual estimated number of worldwide living Supercentenarians is more likely to be between [300 - 450] persons. For the USA, we predict something like [60 - 75] Supercentenarians".
This seems like it means Wikipedia's underlying source predicts they're capturing at best ~10% of all who exist in the US.
I'm wondering if theres any census data or other sources that could help with this- guessing not since Wikipedia would likely cite that instead if it existed. Could use their extrapolation (60-75) of expected # of Supercentenarians to Florida along with the fact that Florida has an older population to just get a gut check if the # you found seems reasonable.
I find the idea and approaches looking into the voting data interesting, and I'll definitely look more into the the other reports you released when I get a chance.
> "found some fraud." As a final note, I'd just suggest that we all be super careful when levying charges like this given 1) it seems you just found some circumstantial non-peer reviewed evidence of fraud 2) how important trust is in our electoral systems to the function of open societies and 3) the vast majority of research points to voting fraud being almost non-existent.
Questioning these institutions is incredibly important and part of an open an effective democratic system, but we have to be careful and specific with what we assert and our evidence.
This is true especially now, with political factions across the US actively seeking to undermine our faith in electoral system using bad-faith and non-fact based arguments for political gain.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_supercentenar...
[1]: http://supercentenarian-research-foundation.org/TableE.aspx
I did not realize the cert had expired. I'll check that out. Thanks.
I agree with you that I should not have used the word fraud. I was careful in writing the original post and careless with this comment on HN.
One way we prepare for voting is we take the sample ballot and spend as many evenings (after the littles are asleep) as we can researching, individually, everything and every one on the ballot. We then discuss. We then fill out our sample ballot to take with us. Note, we do not vote the same. That's not the point. The point is to have a discussion and to help each other understand as much about what is on the ballot as we possibly can.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-s-la...
I don't think it's at all inconceivable that voting fraud could be a real issue.
Though I agree and then some w/ the larger issues you mention.
IMO democracy as we practice it is (quite obviously) failing us (in CA and SF anyway). The "Sortition" idea recently shared on HN sounds very promising (not that I think there's a chance in hell we'll see it tried!).
From the article itself:
"The Democrats are creating a new, highly efficient tool to turn out voters," said Neugebauer, the GOP consultant. "If Republicans can’t find a way to match it, we’re going to lose more elections all over the country."
> Few people noticed when Gov. Jerry Brown signed the changes in AB1921 into law two years ago. In the past, California allowed only relatives or people living in the same household to drop off mail ballots for another voter. The new law allowed anyone, even a paid political campaign worker, to collect and return ballots — “harvesting” them, in political slang.
Is there any developed country that allows someone other than public employees to handle ballots like this?
That's truly sad.
Also the claim the Republican party relies on voter suppression to stay in office is dubious at best.
I really hope the conservative party does adapt. It's really in a bad spot right now. But that is completely different than what the parent was saying.
Why should anyone bemoan a party that goes into obscurity given a fair and accessible elections when their views are incompatible with the majority of voters? Why would anyone shed tears over this?
The party will adapt or it will be replaced.
I also think that if we did not have the electoral college then democrats would always win and 46% of America would lose its voice. Sure the majority gets it's way, but it's not that large of a majority and it kind of goes against the idea of giving a voice to the minority.
> I also think that if we did not have the electoral college then democrats would always win and 46% of America would lose its voice.
If that was the case, the Republicans would have to change to be more appealing to the voters.
To take a very extreme example, in the 18th century, there were constituencies in Britain which had a population of under a hundred and elected an MP (so-called rotten boroughs), and then there was Manchester, which had a population of a few hundred thousand and didn't have an MP at all. Now, no doubt it was very unfortunate for the people in the rotten boroughs when the system was reformed and they lost their massive overrepresentation, but I don't think many would argue that it was _unfair_. And that reform did cause the Tory party in particular to have to change fairly dramatically to stay relevant. But it changed, and is still relevant today.
> it kind of goes against the idea of giving a voice to the minority
The US has two legislative houses and an executive president. The minority controls two out of the three, currently. If the electoral college was removed they'd _still_ control one out of the three (it's possible that they lose the senate this time around, but they're doing especially badly right now; they have a substantial built-in advantage in the senate and will tend to hold it).
EDIT: Also, it's not like the Republican party represents some sort of weird Borg-like monoculture who agree on everything. It only exists as a single entity because the US system is inimical to more than two parties existing. Lots of its voters aren't really represented by it anyway; they just vote for it because they dislike it less than they dislike the other side.
That's how I understand the situation to be.
All the mail in ballots require a signature which is typically verified against the signature in DMV or one you provided during registration.
Sometimes the ballots are rejected because it doesn't match. You can actually check online if your vote was counted.
If you decide to cast a vote in person and you received ballot by mail, you can surrender your mail ballot too get in person one. If you don't provide one, you can cast a provisional one, which will be counted only of they don't receive mail in ballot, if they do you also will be in trouble.
John Olivier also had response [1] about voter fraud.
At the end of the day, why is it unreasonable to have similar voter laws to say France or Germany? Maybe you get a ballot in the mail, but you have to show up with a photo ID. This doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
Germany and France have a mandatory national ID that everyone has. European countries which _don't_ have mandatory national ID will generally accept a wide variety of things. For instance, in Ireland, we can use a bank card, a social security card, a birth cert, an employee or student ID card, and so on. Essentially everyone will have one of these.
If the US used this sort of approach I don't think there'd be so much concern. The problem comes in requiring ID which certain classes of people are likely not to have. I don't think any US state has proposed an Irish-style approach to this; most seem to want either a driving license or a purpose-designed ID.
33 states allow by-mail voting without any specific reason (or have mail-in elections to begin with). This includes many big republican states like Georgia and Florida (with Texas being the notable exception--there, you need to certify you'll be away from your polling place on election day).
> For instance, in Ireland, we can use a bank card, a social security card, a birth cert, an employee or student ID card, and so on. Essentially everyone will have one of these.
> The problem comes in requiring ID which certain classes of people are likely not to have. I don't think any US state has proposed an Irish-style approach to this; most seem to want either a driving license or a purpose-designed ID.
You misperceive where the battle lines actually are in the US: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-.... No state requires a "driving license or purpose-designed ID for voting.
14 states, including most of the largest ones, require no documentation whatsoever. Here in Maryland, I voted by walking down to the fire station, writing my address on a ballot, and signing it. These states are significantly more permissive than Ireland.
The next batch of states requires some form of ID, or other documentation, but usually you can vote anyway by providing identifying information and signing an affidavit. In Texas, for example, you need some sort of photo ID, and if you don't have one, you sign a declaration saying you don't have one. These is about as permissive as Ireland. Maybe a bit more permissive, because you can usually still vote even if you don't have an official ID.
Only 7 states have a "strict" voter ID law. These just require some form of photo ID. All but Wisconsin allows you to vote and then come back 3-5 days alter with your photo ID. This sounds roughly comparable to Ireland, maybe a bit more restrictive insofar as you need a photo ID (employee or student ID card) as opposed to a non-photo ID (bank card).
When you hear people in the U.S. talk about voter ID laws being used for "voter suppression" those people want all the state laws to be like Maryland, where there is zero verification. Ireland's laws would get lumped in with those of evil Republican states like Texas. Likewise, when you hear about "voter purges" for the most part they're talking about any attempt to maintain an accurate list of who is registered to vote (in a country where it's not mandatory to update your address with the local government).
In LA and California, the voter rolls have 112-114% as many people as the number of eligible voters in the county: https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/judicial-watch-.... According to those counties, they classify those voters into "active" and "inactive" lists, but in fact people on either list can still show up and cast a ballot and have it counted. When states like Georgia try to remove voters from the rolls that didn't respond to multiple notices sent to their home address, or haven't voted in many years, people call that "voter suppression."
Removing people from voter rolls should require making active efforts to determine if there is a change in voter status. For example, are they still filing taxes at the same address? The most common cause of stale voter roll information is people moving, and the voter database not reflecting it, but there are already several government databases that will reflect whether or not someone has moved. Purging voters simply because of nonresponse and non-voting should be insufficient burden of proof--and yet states have tried to do that in the past.
It's actually quite frustrating how many different government agencies I have to inform of my move [1], especially because there's very little indication of who will and who won't be told of it.
[1] The title registration of my car and my driver's license not using the same database is particularly frustrating because it was the same damn agency.
https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/here...
> The notices are generated after the state compares the list of people who submitted a change of address form to the U.S. Postal Service with the state’s overall list of registered voters.
> Voters who receive them are asked to fill out the form and return them to their local county elections office. The notice says a voter will be declared “inactive” if they don’t respond within 30 days. Several advocacy groups including the ACLU of Georgia, however, say not all voters should face that consequence.
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/20/790319853/are-states-purging-...
> Now, in Wisconsin, it's a whole different case. It's the state that wants to wait until after the 2020 elections to remove some 234,000 voters who appear to have moved. They want to wait because they've run into problems in the past using Division of Motor Vehicle change of address records to clean up their lists.
A lot of people in the US are very much opposed to voter id but many western countries have it? Why is the US the only country where people seem to claim it disenfranchises people?
This isn't even a secret or anything, GOP operatives openly admit that the purpose of these voter ID laws is to suppress minority voters: https://www.thedailybeast.com/republicans-admit-voter-id-law...
Some other countries have a nationally issued ID that citizens are given for little or no cost. In those cases, voter ID laws would be much less controversial. I don't know whether this is the case for all countries where voter ID laws are not controversial.
Voter ID laws would still be controversial in the US because people would say that poor people would not be able to make it to the place where they can pick up their id card. Poor people are less likely to have a vehicle and are more likely to work multiple jobs causing them to work past closing time at the DMV or wherever they would get the ID.
The other issue is that it is not actually clear if voter id laws actually cause people to not be able to vote. https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/3/15/14909764/study-vote...
What do you mean by "fraud of the elections themselves"?
- Voter id laws are necessary. Nearly every democratic nation in the world uses voter id laws:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+many+nations+use+voter+id+laws...
-gerrymandering is commonplace. Both Republicans and Democrats do it:
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-gerrymandering-4057603
There is no clear possible political solution to gerrymandering. When Democrats get control of state legislatures they gerrymander to their benefit; when Republicans get control they do the same.
or
- regular closing of the polls. Polls must close early enough so that the vote can be counted and go in. The hours are rarely if ever extraordinary.
If you cared about privacy, NSA abuse is not where you would start. Its a fraction of a percent compared to the fingerprinting and cookie tracking that happens in the open.
The NSA abuses may be a problem, but its minuscule to the tracking commercial surveillance on the internet itself.
This article suggests there is some security-through-obscurity with each county having its own ballot version, changed each election year.
They also mention matching voter registrations and signatures, but doesn't this defeat the principle of anonymous voting by putting your signature and name in the same envelope as your vote?
https://www.cpr.org/2018/10/25/colorado-is-a-pretty-darn-saf...
The outer envelope contains the sealed (invalid otherwise) inner envelope and an affidavit where you declare that the vote was your own blah blah. This also doubles as your voting registration (dunno how to precisely translate it, it’s a paper your receive that allows you to vote wherever or via mail).
So the security is that it’s perjury if you’re not voting properly. The anonymity is because the inner envelope is only opened when counting. The outer envelope is gone by then.
It used to be that you signed the inner envelope, but it changed a couple of years ago in order decrease the likelihood to link your signature to your vote.
(This is, in fact, almost exactly the trick Gore tried to pull in 2000, except it was counting invalid paper ballots only in counties that had gone in his favor.)
I wonder whats wrong in this case?
A few examples of where this can go wrong:
* Introducing third party ballot collectors risks bad actors manipulating the ballot pipeline, for example what we saw in 2018 in North Carolina's 9th district.
* The US mail is mostly reliable, but lost mail (in my experience) is still fairly common. While this would be a random occurrence, every election cycle involves several tight races, and a lost ballot can flip the results.
* In the event errors in ballot transmission occur, you need to correct them in a timely manner. This requires someone to put in the effort to proactively watch out for missing ballots. Individuals are lazy, and it might not be in the interests of partisan officials to try.
The severity of these and other issues largely depends on the volume of mail voting; the more mail voting the more incentive to try to subvert it. As with any security issue, the defenses against them need to be strong enough to make the attacks too expensive to execute. Just because we don't see fraud yet doesn't mean mail voting won't be targeted in the future.
Incidentally, this is a VERY common argument against extending the franchise, and extremely self-serving. And also typically incorrect; the Tory party in the UK was terrified of letting all men vote, and then of letting all people vote; a century later, they're still getting elected (though of course they have a somewhat different character now that they have to appeal to people who aren't even male landowners...)
You could turn this around since its possibly that people who wouldn't normally vote but would vote if they could do a mail in ballot are probably less informed. The Republican Party is afraid that people who are less informed are more likely to vote for the Democratic Party.
How did you get there? I'd assume a lot of people who don't vote in the US don't vote because in many states it is awkward if one has a job.
Also, it doesn't matter how informed voters are; in a democracy they are supposed to be able to vote.
It is an assumption. If somebody cared about politics they would be more likely to vote and be informed. If somebody was apathetic about politics they would be less likely to vote and be less likely to keep up with politics.
I haven't seen any studies that looks into how knowledgeable voters vs nonvoters are so I could be wrong. If you know of any studies I would be very interested in reading them.
>I'd assume a lot of people who don't vote in the US don't vote because in many states it is awkward if one has a job.
Its not hard to vote if you have a job. You can spend 10 minutes everyday for a few weeks looking up the issues. On your way to or from work you vote. Ideally you would have written down what you are voting for based on what you looked up so the process will go smoothly and quickly.
I don't know what every area is like but it has taken me like 20 minutes max to actually vote when I go in.
>Also, it doesn't matter how informed voters are; in a democracy they are supposed to be able to vote.
I never said they should not be allowed to vote.
Just because some should be able to vote doesn't mean they actually should vote. I think people who are uninformed are being reckless if they vote and are actually harming democracy.
And if you're in a position that requires you show up for work at a certain time or lose your job, and your commute requires 90 minutes of bus rides, and your polling place is not on your bus route, how do you go to your polling place? And should there be some issue with your registration, and you need to go all the way to the county courthouse to file a provisional ballot...
There are plenty of people for whom actually making it to a polling place can be a challenge; just because it's easy for you, who is presumably a salaried worker commuting by car to a workplace that doesn't mind you showing up ±several minutes from regular working hours doesn't mean it's easy for large portions of the population.
You can vote on your way home or wake up early.
>and your commute requires 90 minutes of bus rides, and your polling place is not on your bus route, how do you go to your polling place?
Not sure about all states but California has been allowing people to vote in different polling places then their own.
If this becomes widespread it would eliminate this part of the issue.
>And should there be some issue with your registration, and you need to go all the way to the county courthouse to file a provisional ballot...
This would also be an issue with mail in ballots. Your vote would either not count or you would have to go in.
>There are plenty of people for whom actually making it to a polling place can be a challenge; just because it's easy for you, who is presumably a salaried worker commuting by car to a workplace that doesn't mind you showing up ±several minutes from regular working hours doesn't mean it's easy for large portions of the population.
You can go after work as well. Many polling places are open until 8 or 9.
In California they have the polling places open for multiple days prior to the election as well. I am not sure how wide spread that is outside of California.
Just to be clear I am in favor of making voting day a holiday. Some people still need to work (doctors, grocery stores, police, etc) but they could be given a few hours of paid vacation to vote. I think this is a better solution than mail in ballots.
That assumes the polls are open when you're going home.
> Not sure about all states but California has been allowing people to vote in different polling places then their own.
This is literally the first time I've heard of a state that allows that. It is not the case in any of the three states I've voted in, and it is quite surprising to me that it is logistically feasible to make work, given that each polling place needs its own ballot design for the local races.
What you're missing as well is the logistics of making it to unusual destinations when you're dependent on often poor-quality bus transit. If bus routes come every half-hour, and only during certain times, inserting an unusual destination onto your itinerary can be challenging. It especially doesn't help if you also live in a state where the polling place is shut down and moved elsewhere because the wrong party votes there.
Because of that I would say my point would still stand.
Education correlates with increases in Democratic votes. Christianity with Republican ones.
It's not about information, it's about income.
There is a few issues.
1. That study was from 2012. Things have quite possibly changed since then.
2. The study did not take a look at age. The average Fox News viewer is older than most news shows. Older people have worse memory. A study should look at the various age groups to make sure that it is not just old people not knowing stuff. I am guessing young people who watch Fox are more informed than old people who watch Fox.
3. What is the correlation between Fox News viewers and voters? Its possible that most Fox News people don't actually vote and as such bringing up Fox news is irrelevant to the conversation.
4. What is the correlation between poor people and Fox New views? Since we are talking about poor people it seems like you should have included this.
>Guess which party's loyalists watch exclusively Fox News?
There have been studies that show the majority of Fox News viewers watch news from multiple news sources.
>Education correlates with increases in Democratic votes.
Being educated does not mean informed about politics. Having a bachelors in biology doesn't mean somebody knows anything about various policies.
>Christianity with Republican ones.
In 2014 it was estimated that 84% of democrats believed in God to varying levels. Christianity is common throughout both parties.
>It's not about information, it's about income.
I agree that there is a difference in voting based on income but that does not mean it is because of income.
I doubt any Republican using that argument can point to a portion of the Constitution that says "less informed citizens can be arbitrarily denied their right to vote." And they can't because the Constitution is pretty clear that every citizen has the right to vote (excepting with due process) without qualification.
TBH, I'm hoping the election gives us a real view of public opinion.
Anecdotally, I experienced a union being stood up and the things that were endlessly debated were shown to be non-issues when the ballots were actually cast.
The president has made it clear that despite voting by mail himself multiple times, he does not support wide expansion of the practice.
Occam's Razor apllies here.
If we take off our hate-goggles here, this really isn't the gotchya that journalists want you to think it is. One can be qualified to legally vote by mail and do so while also claiming that overall the system is broken.
Not everyone who disagrees with you has "hate" in them.
However, this doesn't stop my rural farming parents from screaming about rampant voter fraud and "The Dumb-o-crats" trying to take advantage of the system. Yes, they also live in Colorado and vote by mail.
The propaganda works, even on decent people. We have a HUGE misinformation issue to solve in this country before any complex issue like our voting system can ever be talked about seriously.
Those of us that put real work effort into being properly informed, know the real issue is turn-out and how voting by mail enables polling to have MUCH MUCH higher turn-out. This is a problem for one of those parties that have been able to hang onto power through less than ethical means of manipulation and reducing voter turn-out from population bases they look down their nose at.
This isn't my opinion, its fact. It's strategically brilliant by them and their playbook is exceptionally effective. And THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEM IS.
People like my folks are good, decent people. But they're intellectually lazy and are victims to the propaganda machine that runs across their televisions every day. If vetted information was presented in an easy-to-relate way, they would see what I see. But somehow Trump and the right have figured out a single childish label for complex societal issues chanted over and over again, mentally over-powers the thousands of hours living a life of the exact opposite.
It's shocking how well the right has dialed in their messaging. My parents work in the trees and fields, under the hot sun, nearly every day in the summer next to the same people they'll later chant are ruining their "American Prosperity." They nearly bankrupted themselves, keeping these same workers paid during COVID, because they weren't going to let them go hungry or lose their homes. But they'll talk about the rampant welfare state and the need to gut it over dinner.
Somehow, they don't relate what they see in politics with what they're living every day. It's like it's two different worlds for them, and I'm dumbfounded by how the propaganda has created that reality within them.
Voting issues, welfare, and/or any single issue directive won't overpower this reality we live in now. We HAVE to solve this information issue first.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l-nEHkgm_Gk
It looks like the age of Independent candidates is upon US. The existing burdens/obligations prevent the existing parties from seeing the future.
The defenition of puppet is someone else dictating the words and actions, so if your not amazed currently, you're just not a fan of puppet shows.