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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

> Still, the League of Women Voters and NAACP say the state’s signature-verification requirement is unconstitutional because it disenfranchises so many. Election officials are not trained in handwriting analysis to be able to properly determine whether the signature on a ballot matches the one on a voter’s registration, not to mention that a person’s signature can change over time and with age.

Every time I have to sign something that might be verified against a signature record I get nervous and I bet my signature reflects it.

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I'm 100% sure my signature from more than a decade ago when I last signed paperwork for a new license doesn't match my current handwriting/signature.

Also, I'm under the impression that signature verification isn't a very sturdy science. I'm curious what the false positive/false negative rates are and what variables are likely to affect them.

We definitely need a better way to sign something besides wet signatures; mine certainly evolves over time as well as medium and instrument (pens, etc.)

I find the way it's used by credit card companies interesting.

When making a purchase, you can do a different signature each time. You can doodle, draw a straight line, write your name, mix it up, whatever. The only value of the signature is that if you don't recall making a purchase, they can send it to you and it can help trigger your memory or make you trust whether or not the purchase was actually you. So it's not for them to use in the verification process. It's for us to help trigger our memories.

Originally one point was that you signed the back of your card and the merchant would compare the signature on your receipt to the signature on the card to verify your identity. Another point was so the merchant has proof you intended to pay them.

When I was living in the UK (which wisely uses a more sensible PIN system instead of signatures) I was shocked the first time someone asked to see the back of my card. I don't think it's ever happened to me in the US. Culturally we've collectively decided to ignore the whole "signature verification" thing, but when using your card abroad you sometimes are reminded that it's supposed to happen in theory.

That's not why you sign a credit slip. You sign it so the vendor can match it against the signature on the back of the card, because they are on the hook if you later claim fraud. If it matches the back of the card it is a lot harder to claim fraud.

The fact that you can put any doodle you want in there is because the vendors have decided it's cheaper to absorb the fraud than to check the signatures.

Their actions show that signatures aren't actually used in the way you describe. It does say to sign the back of the card, but I've never done so and it's never been checked. Not only do vendors not check, but there's no attempt by credit card companies at getting vendors to check. And they don't check on their end, either. The reason is not just because it's inefficient given the amount of fraud, but also because it's unreliable as a security mechanism.

So clearly, that's not how the signature is actually used. What matters is how it's actually used, which is to help prevent good faith actors from accidentally reporting purchases as fraudulent. That's a valid use, but noteworthy.

Yeah the problem is you can't really do that with elections. That's what makes them so tricky to do well at a distance (be it electronic voting or mail in though I trust mail in more than anything involving computers) it's hard to go back and fix any issues or audit and maintain anonymity. On top of just the sheer number of votes it's a lot of time and uncertainty to try to go back and forth trying to hash out votes.

My bank bounced my rent checks for MONTHS. I went in, supplied a new signature sample, everything. Ended up having to do direct deposit because my bank decided there was no way I could be me.

Yeah it's silly but it's the only process we really have and it's the reason I'm not going to vote by mail this year. I have a reasonably consistent signature if I think about it but I'm not going to risk a random election official throwing it out because I'm younger and have a variable signature. That plus the screwballing that's happening at USPS right now I'm not going to rely on that.

There's 2 weeks to early vote for me so I'll just vote in that period.

Not to mention that digital signature pad they have at the DMV from the early 90s makes my signature looks like a bunch of random squiggles.

Are you allowed to "print" (ie. not use cursive) your signature? If so that would go a long way to making your signatures more recognizable, especially if you don't normally write in cursive.

Have you seen Trump's signature? I've never heard of any requirement that your signature be your name in cursive. Your signature is whatever you want it to be.

Plus, you have to sign your ballot? It's supposed to be secret.

You need to have some way to prevent fraud if you're going to allow mail-in ballots.

It's not as if signatures are going to do that. Especially not any of the types of fraud that involve coercion or payment for votes. If you're paying someone for their vote they can still sign their name. One of the reasons it needs to be secret is to make it impossible for anyone to verify that you voted the way they want you to.

I still don't understand how voting in person is supposed to be any more problematic than e.g. buying groceries in person. Wear a mask, stand six feet apart etc., what's the problem?

It's not any more problematic for the voters, yes, but what about the poll workers? They stay there all day and skew older. The big concern is that reliable poll workers are going to skip this year because of COVID (not unreasonable) and we simply won't have people to facilitate the voting we normally do. https://www.npr.org/2020/08/05/894331965/wanted-young-people...

Would it be that hard to put a sheet of clear plastic between the poll workers and the voters?

You can put all the protections in place you want but if volunteers don't feel safe, they won't show.

> I still don't understand how voting in person is supposed to be any more problematic than e.g. buying groceries in person. Wear a mask, stand six feet apart etc., what's the problem?

Grocery stores don't have checkout lines that are hours long where you are standing around near the same group of strangers for an extended time.

Worse, the states with the longest, slowest voting lines also tend to be the states with less stringent mask requirements, less diligent enforcement of the requirements they do have, and more people who ignore the requirements.

Maybe I'm just not creative enough, but I'd like to know how I would go about committing fraud with my mail-in ballot. I only get one ballot, so I only get to vote once. I could try to steal someone else's and vote with it, but they might notice their lack of ballot and report it to the elections office. And if I voted and they voted, it would get flagged immediately and then the police would get involved. The penalties are pretty stiff considering how little value you'd think one little vote has. You need to figure out how to do it in quantity to offset that risk. Good luck.

Ballot harvesting. The party (or activists) can send people house to house collecting ballots. Two things can happen. The can get the person to sign a blank ballot which the harvester fills out, or the can simply thorw out ballots for the opposing political party.

A woman who thought she was allowed to vote (she was not, as she was a recently paroled felon) got sentenced to a five year prison sentence for it. Another woman voted illegally as a green card holder, sentenced to eight years.

So you are suggesting that the major political parties would sanction, even informally, having people go out to houses to illegally harvest ballots, or throw out ballots they don't agree with? To get one nearly worthless vote at a time, with a very possible multi-year prison sentence for each. That is utterly ridiculous.

It's not illegal in California. The major parties do send people out to harvest ballots. Nobody can tell what happens with the votes. Some people's votes are sure to be discarded. Some people hand over unfilled ballots, with or without signature.

There have been irregularities as a result.

If California allows unsigned ballots, then they have a legal problem to fix. Just because they do it wrong doesn't mean it cannot be done right.

I can't imagine many votes have been discarded, that sounds more like a conspiracy theory. It wouldn't take long to get caught, since voters can easily verify their own vote was recorded.

You don't sign the ballot directly.

The ballot goes into an envelope. You sign the envelope. That envelope goes into a regular postal envelope. When the ballot is received, the signature on the inner envelope is compared to the signature on file, and, if accepted, the envelope is opened and the ballot is transferred to a box to be counted.

How is that not a distinction without a difference when the ballot is in the envelope? So they look at the envelope to get your name and the ballot to see who you voted for. You would need some way to prevent these from being correlated by a person in possession of the thing you put in your mailbox.

The votes are counted in public. The envelope is verified and then put in a pile of verified envelopes. Someone else then removes the ballot from the envelope. In theory they do this face down so they can't see the name, which is verified by the other people watching them.

Then the ballot is placed in the same hoppers that the in person votes are put in and they are commingled.

in Oregon the ballot goes in an envelope with no identification, and that envelope goes inside the envelope with identification.

The outermost envelope is verified and opened, and the innermost envelope is collected with all of the others in a different area for counting.

There is an implied identification that is effective. Some neighborhoods vote one way, and other neighborhoods vote the other way. Postal workers can purposely misplace/delay/destroy the votes for a whole neighborhood.

I think the risk/reward would make this not worth it. You can check to see if your ballot was received. If a bunch of ballots are determined to be lost from the same postal route one assumes the postal inspectors would be having a word with that mail carrier. Tampering with the mail is a pretty serious crime, ballot or not, so there's a strong disincentive to try it.

My town has a bunch of dropboxes which are picked up by election volunteers if you still don't trust the mail. An election volunteer could "lose" a box of ballots but that seems like it would be pretty easily detectable as well.

Since mail tampering is a federal crime maybe Trump could pledge to pardon every mail carrier who throws away ballots from likely Biden voters. Seems pretty unlikely, but I don't know how to counter that.

That prevents you from doing the correlation after the vote has been counted but not before.

To do the correlation in person you would have to do it in the polling place, on election day, in front of election monitors and the voter, during the 30 seconds between when the person fills out their ballot and when they drop it into the box.

If your name is on the envelope, now it can be done anywhere between your mailbox and the polling place during the period of days or weeks between when you put it in your mailbox and when it gets counted. Wouldn't we then need independent election monitors guarding the incoming mailboxes 24/7 for several weeks?

They could also have any number of ways of secretly associating normal in-person ballots with the voter's identity. Perhaps the most obvious would be hidden cameras in the voting booths. There's no unique threat here.

The votes are inside another envelope. The complete ballot actually has two envelopes: the outer envelope has the signature and an inner one contains the votes.

For reference, here is how it works in Washington state: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/faq_vote_by_mail.aspx

It's possible the counters could be looking at ballots but noting and tracking who voted for who would be difficult to do in your head and you can't track it on paper because there are monitors from both sides watching the count happen.

In Oregon, the votes are received by teams of people that are required to have representatives from each of the major parties. They check signatures, then open the outer envelope and take out the secrecy envelope which has the ballot inside and toss that in another box. The person checking the signature does not do anything else with the ballot itself. Then the pile of ballots in their secrecy envelopes is given to another team and they open the envelope and process the ballot.

Yes, the mailman could commit a federal crime and figure out how you voted for. So if you're worried about that, drop the envelope in the actual ballot box.

Your address, or your name, will be enough to determine how you most likely voted.

The mailman sees even more. If you live in a condo and drive a Prius with a "Coexist" sticker, you probably voted one way. If you live in a single-family home with a big yard and you drive a pickup with a "Blue lives matter" license plate holder, you probably voted the other way.

> Your address, or your name, will be enough to determine how you most likely voted.

Your party affiliation is already public record, no need to attempt to infer your preference from your name or address.

In Washington state, you sign the envelope, not the ballot.

You sign the envelope containing your ballot. Then, when they receive it, they verify the outer envelope is proper (signature, etc.). If accepted, they open the envelope and dump your ballot into the box of accepted ballots. Finally, later, they open the box and count the ballots.

This process keeps your vote anonymous.

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