The phrase "is possible" is so wishy-washy. It allows all sorts of movie plot scenarios which might have only 1-in-a-trillon odds.
We've long experience with vote-by-mail. Including 20+ years of all-postal voting in Oregon.
It's clear there is a very low incidence of fraud. We know this because there's a handful of cases where, say, one spouse filled out the ballot for a dead spouse. These can be detected by, for example, checking signatures.
There is also a very low incident of fraud in in-person voting, as when someone own two homes and votes in two districts. So it's not like in-person-only voting is free of fraud.
In neither case is the fraud significant - far less than Bush's FL lead of 537 votes over Gore in the 2000 election.
Can we make up examples of how fraud might occur? Yes! The sergeant of overseas-deployed National Guard troops may require the soldiers to vote a certain way, and be able to verify the ballots before mailing them in.
Now that you know fraud is possible that way, do you want to prevent overseas soldiers from voting?
any fraud would be immediately and obviously apparent.
Open voting leads to a different type of fraud. "I don't rent to people who voted for X". "Anyone who doesn't vote for Y is fired."
] The failure of the law to secure secrecy opened the door to bribery, intimidation, and corruption.
] Money, or “soap,” as it was called, with increasing frequency was used to carry elections after the Civil War.
] It was charged that the bribery of voters in Indiana in 1880 and 1888 was sufficient to determine the result of the election.
] Intimidation was just as rife as bribery
] According to a report of a committee of the Forty-sixth Congress,[94] men were frequently marched or carried to the polls in their employers’ carriages. They were then supplied with ballots, and frequently compelled to hold their hands up with their ballots in them so they could easily be watched until the ballots were dropped into the box. Many labor men were afraid to vote and remained away from the polls. Others who voted against their employers’ wishes frequently lost their jobs. If the employee lived in a factory town, he probably lived in a tenement owned by the company, and possibly his wife and children worked in the mill. If he voted against the wishes of the mill-owners, he and his family were thrown out of the mill, out of the tenement, and out of the means of earning a livelihood
The fraud was indeed so 'obviously apparent' that it "fill[ed] thoughtful citizens with disgust and anxiety. Many electors, aware that the corrupt element was large enough to be able to turn the election, held aloof altogether."
Surely that's far worse than even nation-wide all-postal voting.
So either everybody is really, really good at fraud, or the numbers are really, really tiny.
False dichotomy. The system is set up such that it's comically easy to commit fraud and incredibly difficult to detect it. Imagine a take-home multiple choice math test that says no calculators are allowed. Would you believe that almost nobody used a calculator on it just because almost nobody got caught doing so? Of course not, because you don't have to be really, really good at cheating to get away with it on a test set up like that.
I really hate arguments by analogy. Either the analogy is perfect, in which case the answer is no more visible than it was in the first place, or we're now arguing about the difference between the analogy and the original question.
So I'm not going to get sucked into it. If you have a point to make, make it on the original question, not on one you've tuned to give you the answer that you want.
The proof that there are ninjas under your bed is that you can't see them. Only ninjas are that good.
How is this fraud supposed to occur?
Is the ballot to citizen A intercepted, filled-in, signed with a reasonable facsimile of A's signature, and returned?
Without A asking noticing the ballot never came, so asking for a second ballot? Do you think receiving multiple ballots purporting to be from A would go unnoticed by the elections office?
And the list of who voted is in the public record, so if A didn't vote, and finds that there was a vote in A's name in the last election - or if someone contacts A to double-checks if A actually did vote - then that will stand out too.
Obvious place is to replace it after the A has returned it. Very cheap, very easy, extremely capable MitM attack.
I see no reason why country with long tradition in subverting democracy around the planet wouldn't engage with this type of activity locally. After all it is clear that they have no respect for democracy elsewhere so why at home where profits are even greater.
This is news to me, and I'm having a hard time searching for information about it. Can you link me to where this record is?
so if A didn't vote, and finds that there was a vote in A's name in the last election - or if someone contacts A to double-checks if A actually did vote - then that will stand out too.
Has there ever been an election at any level that you didn't vote in despite being eligible to? Did you check this public record to make sure nobody voted as you? Has anyone ever contacted you to ask if you actually voted in an election that you did vote in? These things are all possible, sure, but they're rare enough in practice that there's plenty of gaps for fraud to slip through.
This is news to me, and I'm having a hard time searching for information about it. Can you link me to where this record is?
It's public record, but it's usually available on request with agreements as to legitimate use. The exact contents differ by state, and the application may be through the state or county election office. There is a rough summary here: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/access... but it's not entirely accurate (e.g., it doesn’t indicate vote history—whether, not how, a voter voted in particular past elections—is available in CA, but it definitely is. e.g., the Sacramento County request form has a box to check to include it https://elections.saccounty.net/Documents/Application%20to%2...
] Voter registration information is public record in Florida with a few exceptions. Information such as your social security number, driver’s license number, Florida ID number, signature, where a voter registered to vote, and where a voter updated a registration cannot be released or disclosed to the public. Other information such as your name, address, date of birth, party affiliation, and when you voted is public information.
] If you're interested in looking up your voting record, there are a few ways of doing so online. Your voting record contains your voter registration information and voting history as maintained by your state, and is publicly available.
] Current Voter History Data / What’s included? Files contain a data entry for each election in which a voter participated in the past 10 years. Voter registration number, NCID, party affiliation, county, and precinct, as well as voting method (e.g., in-person on Election Day, absentee by mail) are included.
The details of what you can get, and how public things are, depends on where you are. What state do you live in?
Did you check this public record to make sure nobody voted as you?
You know that's not the way statistics work, right?
It's not "I didn't vote and therefore X could impersonate me."
It's "X is going to impersonate me but doesn't know if I'm going to vote."
It takes only a few mistakes for X to be detected.
And it requires more than a few votes to change any but a few rare close elections.
Has anyone ever contacted you to ask if you actually voted in an election that you did vote in?
Again, that's not the way statistics works.
I know people have contacted voters to verify they voted because I've read articles about people doing that.
If impersonation fraud is rampant and systemic then it can be identified by a small random sample. Which is unlikely to include any specific person.
If it is rare, then it's unlikely to affect any election. While still risking legal consequences if caught.
And indeed, it's rare, and people are indeed caught.
Comments
The phrase "is possible" is so wishy-washy. It allows all sorts of movie plot scenarios which might have only 1-in-a-trillon odds.
We've long experience with vote-by-mail. Including 20+ years of all-postal voting in Oregon.
It's clear there is a very low incidence of fraud. We know this because there's a handful of cases where, say, one spouse filled out the ballot for a dead spouse. These can be detected by, for example, checking signatures.
There is also a very low incident of fraud in in-person voting, as when someone own two homes and votes in two districts. So it's not like in-person-only voting is free of fraud.
In neither case is the fraud significant - far less than Bush's FL lead of 537 votes over Gore in the 2000 election.
Can we make up examples of how fraud might occur? Yes! The sergeant of overseas-deployed National Guard troops may require the soldiers to vote a certain way, and be able to verify the ballots before mailing them in.
Now that you know fraud is possible that way, do you want to prevent overseas soldiers from voting?
Open voting leads to a different type of fraud. "I don't rent to people who voted for X". "Anyone who doesn't vote for Y is fired."
Just look at the history of the open ballot in American history to see how easy it is to corrupt. From A History of the Australian Ballot System in the United States at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_Australian_B...
] The failure of the law to secure secrecy opened the door to bribery, intimidation, and corruption.
] Money, or “soap,” as it was called, with increasing frequency was used to carry elections after the Civil War.
] It was charged that the bribery of voters in Indiana in 1880 and 1888 was sufficient to determine the result of the election.
] Intimidation was just as rife as bribery
] According to a report of a committee of the Forty-sixth Congress,[94] men were frequently marched or carried to the polls in their employers’ carriages. They were then supplied with ballots, and frequently compelled to hold their hands up with their ballots in them so they could easily be watched until the ballots were dropped into the box. Many labor men were afraid to vote and remained away from the polls. Others who voted against their employers’ wishes frequently lost their jobs. If the employee lived in a factory town, he probably lived in a tenement owned by the company, and possibly his wife and children worked in the mill. If he voted against the wishes of the mill-owners, he and his family were thrown out of the mill, out of the tenement, and out of the means of earning a livelihood
The fraud was indeed so 'obviously apparent' that it "fill[ed] thoughtful citizens with disgust and anxiety. Many electors, aware that the corrupt element was large enough to be able to turn the election, held aloof altogether."
Surely that's far worse than even nation-wide all-postal voting.
No, because we don't know how much fraud people got away with.
We know that people put a fuckton of effort into finding it, and came up empty-handed.
So either everybody is really, really good at fraud, or the numbers are really, really tiny.
False dichotomy. The system is set up such that it's comically easy to commit fraud and incredibly difficult to detect it. Imagine a take-home multiple choice math test that says no calculators are allowed. Would you believe that almost nobody used a calculator on it just because almost nobody got caught doing so? Of course not, because you don't have to be really, really good at cheating to get away with it on a test set up like that.
I really hate arguments by analogy. Either the analogy is perfect, in which case the answer is no more visible than it was in the first place, or we're now arguing about the difference between the analogy and the original question.
So I'm not going to get sucked into it. If you have a point to make, make it on the original question, not on one you've tuned to give you the answer that you want.
If it's so comically easy, how would you carry it out?
How would showing id fix the problem?
The proof that there are ninjas under your bed is that you can't see them. Only ninjas are that good.
How is this fraud supposed to occur?
Is the ballot to citizen A intercepted, filled-in, signed with a reasonable facsimile of A's signature, and returned?
Without A asking noticing the ballot never came, so asking for a second ballot? Do you think receiving multiple ballots purporting to be from A would go unnoticed by the elections office?
And the list of who voted is in the public record, so if A didn't vote, and finds that there was a vote in A's name in the last election - or if someone contacts A to double-checks if A actually did vote - then that will stand out too.
Must have been ninjas. Only ninjas are that good.
Obvious place is to replace it after the A has returned it. Very cheap, very easy, extremely capable MitM attack.
I see no reason why country with long tradition in subverting democracy around the planet wouldn't engage with this type of activity locally. After all it is clear that they have no respect for democracy elsewhere so why at home where profits are even greater.
That sort of fraud isn't fixable by photo id.
That sort of fraud isn't unique to mail-in voting.
This is news to me, and I'm having a hard time searching for information about it. Can you link me to where this record is?
Has there ever been an election at any level that you didn't vote in despite being eligible to? Did you check this public record to make sure nobody voted as you? Has anyone ever contacted you to ask if you actually voted in an election that you did vote in? These things are all possible, sure, but they're rare enough in practice that there's plenty of gaps for fraud to slip through.
It's public record, but it's usually available on request with agreements as to legitimate use. The exact contents differ by state, and the application may be through the state or county election office. There is a rough summary here: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/access... but it's not entirely accurate (e.g., it doesn’t indicate vote history—whether, not how, a voter voted in particular past elections—is available in CA, but it definitely is. e.g., the Sacramento County request form has a box to check to include it https://elections.saccounty.net/Documents/Application%20to%2...
How can you be so sure that the current system is so insecure when you don't know how the current system works and what safeguards are in place?
https://www.votebrevard.gov/Statistics-and-Data/Request-Vote...
] Voter registration information is public record in Florida with a few exceptions. Information such as your social security number, driver’s license number, Florida ID number, signature, where a voter registered to vote, and where a voter updated a registration cannot be released or disclosed to the public. Other information such as your name, address, date of birth, party affiliation, and when you voted is public information.
"Looking Up Your Voting Record Is as Easy as Opening an App" - https://news.yahoo.com/want-look-voting-record-options-03222...
] If you're interested in looking up your voting record, there are a few ways of doing so online. Your voting record contains your voter registration information and voting history as maintained by your state, and is publicly available.
Download NC data from the state, at https://www.ncsbe.gov/results-data/voter-history-data
] Current Voter History Data / What’s included? Files contain a data entry for each election in which a voter participated in the past 10 years. Voter registration number, NCID, party affiliation, county, and precinct, as well as voting method (e.g., in-person on Election Day, absentee by mail) are included.
The details of what you can get, and how public things are, depends on where you are. What state do you live in?
You know that's not the way statistics work, right?
It's not "I didn't vote and therefore X could impersonate me."
It's "X is going to impersonate me but doesn't know if I'm going to vote."
It takes only a few mistakes for X to be detected.
And it requires more than a few votes to change any but a few rare close elections.
Again, that's not the way statistics works.
I know people have contacted voters to verify they voted because I've read articles about people doing that.
If impersonation fraud is rampant and systemic then it can be identified by a small random sample. Which is unlikely to include any specific person.
If it is rare, then it's unlikely to affect any election. While still risking legal consequences if caught.
And indeed, it's rare, and people are indeed caught.