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Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

> The most important feature of public elections is trust.

Agreed.

However, in some states, such as California, mail-in voting has become the default.

What's used to verify identity and integrity? Your signature from your voter's affidavit of registration, a signature from any past voter form, or literally an "X"[1]. Your signature doesn't even need to match, it just must have "similar characteristics". You can print your name or sign in cursive, you can even just use initials. They're all accepted.

We're firmly on the "honor system".

Pair that with lack of voter ID laws, and we have a system that's designed to be untrustworthy.

Yes, I agree, a state issued ID should be free...

[1] https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/elections-code/elec-sect-3019/

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Do you not have in-person early voting?

In Australia you can postal vote if necessary, but "prepoll" voting is much more popular (I believe 37.5% of registered voters, 90% of which actually voted, in 2025). It's just so convenient, with the same crowd of volunteers and officials as actual polling day.

In 2020's national election, nearly 87% of California votes were by mail[1].

California offers day-of in-person voting, and has ballot-drop boxes (unmonitored) and drop-off (monitored) locations for at least several weeks (I believe it was a full month in the past election).

[1] https://abc7.com/post/election-2024-21-californias-registere...

I wonder how correlated is this to how (un)contested California results are (?). I think the main test will be whenever a case like Bush vs Gore happens.

I volunteered at Fairview development center in Costa Mesa CA, which is a place where dozens of disabled residents lived. These people could not talk, move, etc. They were essentially quadriplegics; mentally completely not there; etc. I was a high school student helping move residents to Sunday service and back and doing activities with them (volunteer hours). I clearly remember seeing nurses and others mark ballots of residents that were in no fit state to vote (unable to communicate at all; those who could were often not mentally competent enough to make their own medical decisions, let alone decide who to vote for). I don't think anyone cares to be totally honest. I was shocked the residents even got absentee ballots. Of course, competent adults should be able to vote, but at the point where you're essentially a child mentally? I mean ... how can anyone possibly figure it out. I did lodge a complaint, but nothing came of it.

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