5 ms·

Yikes. How are they determining if a resident moved away from CA? What about if they're dead? What about if they're voting for another relative, friend, or neig

by holler 6y ago

Yikes. How are they determining if a resident moved away from CA? What about if they're dead? What about if they're voting for another relative, friend, or neighbor that isn't paying attention? It seems that without voter ID, this is destined for fraud.

birken 6y ago
When you mail in your ballot you sign it, and the signature is checked to verify it is yours. If you vote for your friend or neighbor, then you need to steal their ballot and forge their signature. You also need them to not notice that they didn't get a ballot and not report it missing/stolen. The rest of the questions apply equally to in-person voting, which are all figured out. Voter fraud also almost never happens because the person committing the fraud is taking enormous risk for literally zero gain. People aren't stupid. Most people don't even vote anyways, why are they going to go to all this effort to commit fraud.
- holler 6y ago
  Oh so there's a database of valid signatures for all 330M Americans?
  - birken 6y ago
    yawn Yes, CA has a database of signatures. In order to register to vote, you need to have a signature. For most people the signature is already on file with the DMV. If you were a resident of CA you can verify this easily, just look at your picture ID... it has your signature on it. I don't know how other states do it, this post is about California.
    - fossuser 6y ago
      Yeah - voter fraud is a common know-nothing talking point not substantiated by evidence. I flagged this article anyway, this isn't really a topic for HN (and the quality of comments shows why).
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - holler 6y ago
      https://www.kuow.org/stories/it-s-easy-to-commit-election-fraud-in-washington-state https://www.kuow.org/stories/it-s-easy-to-commit-election-fr...
      - triceratops 6y ago
        From your article: 'a signature is required when you return your ballot, which is checked against a copy of your signature that's kept on file. Wyman calls it security "at the back end."' So basically like checking voter ID at the polls.
        Alupis 6y ago
        This is scary if true. It's a blanket excuse to toss ballots - just claim the signature didn't look quite the same and nobody is there to challenge that assertion or request follow-up evidence?
        untog 6y ago
        Why have you assumed there is no opportunity to follow up and check?
        Alupis 6y ago
        Because I can't imagine getting through roughly 30 million (adults over 18) ballots in anything resembling a timely manner if we're looking at matching signatures. What more, we're then going to mail, call, visit people who's signatures didn't look like a match? How many of those people will respond?
        birken 6y ago
        San Francisco has about 600 polling places, which each are required to have 4 people. That is 2400 polling workers. In the 2016 election, SF dealt with 400k ballots. Assuming all 400k ballots needed a signature match, and it took a trained worker 20 seconds to match a signature, and they worked 8 hours a day, then it would take: 400k ballots / (3 ballots/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 8 hours/day) = 277 worker-days to match all those signatures. If you can get 2400 people to work the polling places you'd probably have no trouble getting 277 people to match signatures, and would get them all matched within a single 8 hour workday. In practice it takes several days, so you'd need far less. It doesn't seem hard to imagine how this could be done. Running elections is one of the most important things that a government does, so they've put some thought into figuring out how to do it.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      People's signatures change. The signature at DMV on the electronic pad is hardly a representation of my real pen-and-paper signature. I suspect you're assuming there's some sort of verification going on - but have no evidence of this.
  - pietroglyph 6y ago
    In Washington state where I live, voter registration includes soliciting a signature, which can also often be checked with drivers license signature on file. You have to be ignorant or deliberately acting in bad faith to say that signatures are an issue, because about 10 minutes of research will show you that states which do vote by mail get around these issues pretty easily.
- nodesocket 6y ago
  > signature is checked to verify it is yours Are you sure? That doesn’t seem right. How are they verifying it?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - birken 6y ago
    With voter ID, how do poll workers verify the person on the ID is you? The answer is the same. They look at it. This isn't rocket science.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      A government issued ID complete with matching home address and picture is a LOT more difficult to fake than just some scribbling on a piece of paper. Even better - swiping the card and running the data on the magstrip on the back and comparing to what the government has on that ID is almost impossible to forge. Who didn't forge their parent's signature in grade school once in a while? It's trivial to fake signatures - particularly since most people aren't trained Graphologists. Heck, my local grocery store requires me to swipe my government issued ID just to prove my age to buy some beer... they scan your government issued ID to get into some bars and clubs even... but we won't allow that at the voting booth?
      - nodesocket 6y ago
        Not only that, but aren't they volunteers who tend to be elderly? I can't imagine they have any training to remotely compare signatures.
        birken 6y ago
        So the same volunteers who aren't able to compare 2 signatures are also your impenetrable line of defense looking at the tiny picture and tiny writing on a photo ID and verifying the ID is valid and it is the same person.
- egberts1 6y ago
  Senior homes And retirement respite centers are a ripe target for doing proxy voting in a fraudulent manner.
- caseysoftware 6y ago
  > When you mail in your ballot you sign it, and the signature is checked to verify it is yours. If you vote for your friend or neighbor, then you need to steal their ballot and forge their signature. Is this done manually or automated? This is the first time I've heard about it and the mechanics - and scale - are interesting. In addition, how is the database of signatures secured? Who has access to it now? What other things is a signature and basic information (address, phone, dob) sufficient for?
pietroglyph 6y ago
States like Washington do mail-in voting quite successfully. Vote-by-mail is cheaper (no polling places to run), increases voter turnout (which is why it’s universally opposed by the Republican party), and actually reduces fraud risk because it leaves a paper trail and removes the opportunity for voter intimidation at polling places.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  Sorry, but the very last point is nonsense on balance. Far, far more voters will be intimidated by threat of domestic violence or family pressure to vote the "right way", because the spouse or family member can literally watch them fill out the ballot and mail it in. Voting booths provide privacy in the act of voting, mailed ballots do not. It's perfectly fine to believe that this is a reasonable tradeoff for increased turnout and general enfranchisement, but it's not going to reduce voter intimidation.
  - thatswrong0 6y ago
    You can have the exact same threat of violence or family pressure for voting booths. "Show me a cellphone picture of the ballot you voted with" I think making a claim either way about voter intimidation is silly. The most important points are to increase voter turnout and to reduce large-scale fraud.
    - bpodgursky 6y ago
      That's just not true, many jurisdictions don't allow electronic devices, for exactly this reason: https://www.bustle.com/p/can-i-use-my-phone-while-voting-all-the-rules-you-need-to-know-about-10169489 https://www.bustle.com/p/can-i-use-my-phone-while-voting-all...
      - thatswrong0 6y ago
        I'm sure it's illegal to pressure someone to vote a certain way as well. Do you really think someone is monitoring someone's voting booth to see if they're using their phone? Wouldn't that be in exact violation of the problem you're talking about? How would this be enforced? Very silly.
kaikai 6y ago
Voter fraud is pretty rare. Voter disenfranchisement is not. Accepting a small increase in fraud (which isn't proven, by the way) would be worth allowing more of the population to vote.
jdashg 6y ago
It's a bit late to be concerned: CA has already had opt-in mail-in voting for a while! Ballots are mailed to the address on file, you can't just ask for a friend's. Voting fraud just doesn't scale either: A couple fraudulent votes per fraudster? No, election fraud is way more dangerous. Anti-fraud efforts are proportional to fraud prevalence, which is very low. For voter verification, the rate of false negatives (you're not registered to vote, when you are) wildly dwarfs the false positive (fraud) rate. I'm happy to be concerned if presented evidence of a problem, but absent evidence to counter real, concrete evidence of "voting security"->false-negatives, they don't seem worth spending time, money, and effort on. (After all, government bureaucracy and waste are famously unpopular)
- Alupis 6y ago
  What about vote harvesting? Mail-in Ballots open the door for this abuse a lot more than before. Just drive around and offer to return Ballots or "help" people fill them in.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    Stuff like that tends to get out. For example: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746800630/north-carolina-gop-operative-faces-new-felony-charges-that-allege-ballot-fraud https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746800630/north-carolina-gop-...
    - Alupis 6y ago
      Ya, well in SF they've more-or-less made this very thing legal. Read into that what you want.
      - no-s 6y ago
        it kills me how whenever one raises a question or criticism about the potential for voter fraud in mail-in voting a huge cloud of vitriol descends upon them. It shouldn't be necessary to prove that voter fraud exists in order to wonder about the propensity for fraud. I lived at the same address in San Mateo for 18 years and every time I voted at the polls I would check the book and see there were 3-4 folks registered to my house that I did not know. I complained to the county multiple times and they informed me it didn't matter, those folks were not voting. Then in 2008 I started walking neighborhoods for the local Republican Party. They gave me a list of registered voters and the most recent elections they voted. I checked my address and sure enough all of those extra voters had been voting. Also one additional person was listed. I went back and complained to the party HQ and at the county assessor's office. Those folks stayed on the list until 2013. I moved in 2017 and submitted the form to cancel my registration. Guess what? I checked just now and I'm still registered to vote in San Mateo! Wonder if I voted in the last election there?
jlmorton 6y ago
> Yikes. How are they determining if a resident moved away from CA? What about if they're dead? What about if they're voting for another relative, friend, or neighbor that isn't paying attention? I think it's strange you seem to believe the people responsible for implementing this did not think of the few complications you were able to rattle off the top of your head. As it happens, they send the ballot to your California address, and mail-in ballots are not forwarded by the postal service. The Secretary of State updates the voter rolls annually, and removes people who have died. People voting must sign the ballot and mail it. The fact that they voted is recorded, and they can check on the status. If someone voted for a dead person, that would be a crime punishable by five years in prison. It might happen, but would you file a single false ballot in a state of 40 million people under the threat of a five year prison sentence?

by holler 6y ago

birken 6y ago

When you mail in your ballot you sign it, and the signature is checked to verify it is yours. If you vote for your friend or neighbor, then you need to steal their ballot and forge their signature. You also need them to not notice that they didn't get a ballot and not report it missing/stolen. The rest of the questions apply equally to in-person voting, which are all figured out. Voter fraud also almost never happens because the person committing the fraud is taking enormous risk for literally zero gain. People aren't stupid. Most people don't even vote anyways, why are they going to go to all this effort to commit fraud.

holler 6y ago
Oh so there's a database of valid signatures for all 330M Americans?
- birken 6y ago
  yawn Yes, CA has a database of signatures. In order to register to vote, you need to have a signature. For most people the signature is already on file with the DMV. If you were a resident of CA you can verify this easily, just look at your picture ID... it has your signature on it. I don't know how other states do it, this post is about California.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    Yeah - voter fraud is a common know-nothing talking point not substantiated by evidence. I flagged this article anyway, this isn't really a topic for HN (and the quality of comments shows why).
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - holler 6y ago
    https://www.kuow.org/stories/it-s-easy-to-commit-election-fraud-in-washington-state https://www.kuow.org/stories/it-s-easy-to-commit-election-fr...
    - triceratops 6y ago
      From your article: 'a signature is required when you return your ballot, which is checked against a copy of your signature that's kept on file. Wyman calls it security "at the back end."' So basically like checking voter ID at the polls.
      - Alupis 6y ago
        This is scary if true. It's a blanket excuse to toss ballots - just claim the signature didn't look quite the same and nobody is there to challenge that assertion or request follow-up evidence?
        untog 6y ago
        Why have you assumed there is no opportunity to follow up and check?
        Alupis 6y ago
        Because I can't imagine getting through roughly 30 million (adults over 18) ballots in anything resembling a timely manner if we're looking at matching signatures. What more, we're then going to mail, call, visit people who's signatures didn't look like a match? How many of those people will respond?
        birken 6y ago
        San Francisco has about 600 polling places, which each are required to have 4 people. That is 2400 polling workers. In the 2016 election, SF dealt with 400k ballots. Assuming all 400k ballots needed a signature match, and it took a trained worker 20 seconds to match a signature, and they worked 8 hours a day, then it would take: 400k ballots / (3 ballots/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 8 hours/day) = 277 worker-days to match all those signatures. If you can get 2400 people to work the polling places you'd probably have no trouble getting 277 people to match signatures, and would get them all matched within a single 8 hour workday. In practice it takes several days, so you'd need far less. It doesn't seem hard to imagine how this could be done. Running elections is one of the most important things that a government does, so they've put some thought into figuring out how to do it.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    People's signatures change. The signature at DMV on the electronic pad is hardly a representation of my real pen-and-paper signature. I suspect you're assuming there's some sort of verification going on - but have no evidence of this.
- pietroglyph 6y ago
  In Washington state where I live, voter registration includes soliciting a signature, which can also often be checked with drivers license signature on file. You have to be ignorant or deliberately acting in bad faith to say that signatures are an issue, because about 10 minutes of research will show you that states which do vote by mail get around these issues pretty easily.
nodesocket 6y ago
> signature is checked to verify it is yours Are you sure? That doesn’t seem right. How are they verifying it?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- birken 6y ago
  With voter ID, how do poll workers verify the person on the ID is you? The answer is the same. They look at it. This isn't rocket science.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    A government issued ID complete with matching home address and picture is a LOT more difficult to fake than just some scribbling on a piece of paper. Even better - swiping the card and running the data on the magstrip on the back and comparing to what the government has on that ID is almost impossible to forge. Who didn't forge their parent's signature in grade school once in a while? It's trivial to fake signatures - particularly since most people aren't trained Graphologists. Heck, my local grocery store requires me to swipe my government issued ID just to prove my age to buy some beer... they scan your government issued ID to get into some bars and clubs even... but we won't allow that at the voting booth?
    - nodesocket 6y ago
      Not only that, but aren't they volunteers who tend to be elderly? I can't imagine they have any training to remotely compare signatures.
      - birken 6y ago
        So the same volunteers who aren't able to compare 2 signatures are also your impenetrable line of defense looking at the tiny picture and tiny writing on a photo ID and verifying the ID is valid and it is the same person.
egberts1 6y ago
Senior homes And retirement respite centers are a ripe target for doing proxy voting in a fraudulent manner.
caseysoftware 6y ago
> When you mail in your ballot you sign it, and the signature is checked to verify it is yours. If you vote for your friend or neighbor, then you need to steal their ballot and forge their signature. Is this done manually or automated? This is the first time I've heard about it and the mechanics - and scale - are interesting. In addition, how is the database of signatures secured? Who has access to it now? What other things is a signature and basic information (address, phone, dob) sufficient for?

pietroglyph 6y ago

States like Washington do mail-in voting quite successfully. Vote-by-mail is cheaper (no polling places to run), increases voter turnout (which is why it’s universally opposed by the Republican party), and actually reduces fraud risk because it leaves a paper trail and removes the opportunity for voter intimidation at polling places.

bpodgursky 6y ago
Sorry, but the very last point is nonsense on balance. Far, far more voters will be intimidated by threat of domestic violence or family pressure to vote the "right way", because the spouse or family member can literally watch them fill out the ballot and mail it in. Voting booths provide privacy in the act of voting, mailed ballots do not. It's perfectly fine to believe that this is a reasonable tradeoff for increased turnout and general enfranchisement, but it's not going to reduce voter intimidation.
- thatswrong0 6y ago
  You can have the exact same threat of violence or family pressure for voting booths. "Show me a cellphone picture of the ballot you voted with" I think making a claim either way about voter intimidation is silly. The most important points are to increase voter turnout and to reduce large-scale fraud.
  - bpodgursky 6y ago
    That's just not true, many jurisdictions don't allow electronic devices, for exactly this reason: https://www.bustle.com/p/can-i-use-my-phone-while-voting-all-the-rules-you-need-to-know-about-10169489 https://www.bustle.com/p/can-i-use-my-phone-while-voting-all...
    - thatswrong0 6y ago
      I'm sure it's illegal to pressure someone to vote a certain way as well. Do you really think someone is monitoring someone's voting booth to see if they're using their phone? Wouldn't that be in exact violation of the problem you're talking about? How would this be enforced? Very silly.

kaikai 6y ago

Voter fraud is pretty rare. Voter disenfranchisement is not. Accepting a small increase in fraud (which isn't proven, by the way) would be worth allowing more of the population to vote.

jdashg 6y ago

It's a bit late to be concerned: CA has already had opt-in mail-in voting for a while! Ballots are mailed to the address on file, you can't just ask for a friend's. Voting fraud just doesn't scale either: A couple fraudulent votes per fraudster? No, election fraud is way more dangerous. Anti-fraud efforts are proportional to fraud prevalence, which is very low. For voter verification, the rate of false negatives (you're not registered to vote, when you are) wildly dwarfs the false positive (fraud) rate. I'm happy to be concerned if presented evidence of a problem, but absent evidence to counter real, concrete evidence of "voting security"->false-negatives, they don't seem worth spending time, money, and effort on. (After all, government bureaucracy and waste are famously unpopular)

Alupis 6y ago
What about vote harvesting? Mail-in Ballots open the door for this abuse a lot more than before. Just drive around and offer to return Ballots or "help" people fill them in.
- triceratops 6y ago
  Stuff like that tends to get out. For example: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746800630/north-carolina-gop-operative-faces-new-felony-charges-that-allege-ballot-fraud https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746800630/north-carolina-gop-...
  - Alupis 6y ago
    Ya, well in SF they've more-or-less made this very thing legal. Read into that what you want.
    - no-s 6y ago
      it kills me how whenever one raises a question or criticism about the potential for voter fraud in mail-in voting a huge cloud of vitriol descends upon them. It shouldn't be necessary to prove that voter fraud exists in order to wonder about the propensity for fraud. I lived at the same address in San Mateo for 18 years and every time I voted at the polls I would check the book and see there were 3-4 folks registered to my house that I did not know. I complained to the county multiple times and they informed me it didn't matter, those folks were not voting. Then in 2008 I started walking neighborhoods for the local Republican Party. They gave me a list of registered voters and the most recent elections they voted. I checked my address and sure enough all of those extra voters had been voting. Also one additional person was listed. I went back and complained to the party HQ and at the county assessor's office. Those folks stayed on the list until 2013. I moved in 2017 and submitted the form to cancel my registration. Guess what? I checked just now and I'm still registered to vote in San Mateo! Wonder if I voted in the last election there?

jlmorton 6y ago

> Yikes. How are they determining if a resident moved away from CA? What about if they're dead? What about if they're voting for another relative, friend, or neighbor that isn't paying attention? I think it's strange you seem to believe the people responsible for implementing this did not think of the few complications you were able to rattle off the top of your head. As it happens, they send the ballot to your California address, and mail-in ballots are not forwarded by the postal service. The Secretary of State updates the voter rolls annually, and removes people who have died. People voting must sign the ballot and mail it. The fact that they voted is recorded, and they can check on the status. If someone voted for a dead person, that would be a crime punishable by five years in prison. It might happen, but would you file a single false ballot in a state of 40 million people under the threat of a five year prison sentence?