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Comment by Fezzik | Hacker News Reader

Do you have a citation for voting by mail being demonstrable problematic? None of the things you describe are even true. We’ve been voting by mail in Oregon for decades and the demonstrated instances of voter fraud are effectively zero. The Heritage Foundation, which is opposed to vote by mail, has a great list here: https://electionfraud.heritage.org/search?state=OR.

I encourage you to click the ‘Read’ tab to see the actual circumstances resulting in the convictions as most are for trying to game ballot signatures and have nothing to do with votes being cast. It just doesn’t happen because the system is secure.

Never once has anyone, outside of their expansive imagination, proven that voting by mail is not secure and effective.

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France is an example. They allowed mail in voting, had issues with fraud, then banned it.

https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/57152/why-isnt-...

… in 1975.

I have EXCELLENT, current news for you, comrade. Since then, I can point you to six States in the USA that have implemented mail-in voting that is demonstrable secure and gives far more people the ability to vote than mandatory in-person voting. Isn’t that simply wonderful to hear? And, to boot, lest you worry about volume, one of those States alone (sunny California) is nearly the same population as France was in 1975! So even having large populations vote entirely by mail is proven to be a non-issue! Phew, I’m glad we can stop trotting out fear mongering and speculative arguments of unproven inevitable doom to stupidly disenfranchise voters!

There are open accusations of mail-in fraud in California, not a settled issue. France is an interesting example because there was fraud, settled issue.

It seems obvious, no?

1: Vote in person, with ID

2: Mail ballots out, mail ballots in

Which will have more fraud?

France isn’t that interesting of an example given the exponential changes to how mail-in ballots work that have been implemented in the last 50 years. Using France as your lone example is like citing to the Challenger launch and ignoring every subsequent success in deciding if you’re going to launch a rocket. It’s almost delusional.

Apropos of nothing, Oregon has over 800,000 inactive voters [0] on the voter roll that should have been removed but weren't. So there's room for improvement.

[0] https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2026/01/facing-trump-adm...

Citations aren’t necessary when the incentives for fraud are so great and the means of executing fraud so easy. It’s not demonstrably problematic, it’s inevitably problematic.

Citations are needed when I can point you to six States that have vote-by-mail systems and there’s no evidence of meaningful fraud in those systems. And citations are especially needed when the very think tanks that are spending millions of dollars trying to disenfranchise voters by banning mail-in voting are unable to find meaningful cases of fraud to bolster their argument and instead rely on nonsense like ‘it’s inevitable that something bad will happen, trust me bro!’

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