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Comment by jb775 | Hacker News Reader

> by preventing members of the other party from voting

This is so absurdly dramatic. Just about everything is back open and ppl agree that wearing a mask basically removes all risk. If ppl want to vote, they can get off their ass and go vote.

And from a security standpoint, how can you say this with a straight face? Some of the hardest modern struggles in the tech industry revolve around security...and you're over here acting like mailing in paper ballots, with no authentication/encryption/verification is a secure practice. All it takes is one or a few bad actors to skew the results. Look up cognitive dissonance, I think it's hitting you hard here.

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You will need to find some evidence of voter fraud for mail in ballots. Many states have it as an option and it hasn't happened. The military regularly votes by mail and it hasn't happened.

It's funny you open your reply about "absurdly dramatic" then lay an equally absurd claim about vote-by-mail having a problem with fraud.

Your reply also conveniently ignores the historical pattern of voter suppression coming from the Republican party.

It seems in America, some constitutional rights are more protected than others.

But the military I think we can trust more than the Postal Service, every time we hear of a postal employee destroying or throwing away mail should be a significant enough reason that the agency is simply not ready to take this on. Maybe at the next election, maybe with a significantly more funding, transparency, and security, but not now. Mail in voting would be great, but not now. It’s far too dangerous.

Tell that to people that live in Colorado, Oregon, Washington, or (mostly) Utah. They've been voting by mail for years.

I'd worry a lot more about computerized election systems before voting by mail. I think people are too worried about individual votes/errors. 0.0x% of ballots being lost/not counted/etc. is a problem with any election system ("hanging chads", signatures not matching well, ...), not just voting by mail. The question should be how hard is it to pull off a large scale disruption/fraud without being detected.

Your own current president always votes by mail. If it’s fine for him why on Earth do you think that it’s not fine for everyone else?

The coronavirus has been recognized as an issue since before March. The only reason why there is not better safeguards in place for vote by mail is because the ruling party does not want it to happen.

The fact that you're not familiar with the ballot authentication and verification mechanisms used in mail-in voting suggests a starting point for your research.

Several states have had mail-in voting for years. It only became a political issue a few months ago, and only amongst one party.

Meanwhile, rigged voting machines that flip votes have been caught on camera countless times. Zero effort has been made to do anything about that.

> All it takes is one or a few bad actors to skew the results.

Most elections aren't close enough for the outcome to be swung by the kind of paper ballot fraud that a single person is capable of committing. Unlike electronic hacks, paper ballot fraud doesn't scale.

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