24 ms·

One in 10 ballots rejected in last month’s vote-by-mail elections in New Jersey

184 points by Alupis 6y ago

koolba 6y ago
> 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.
- mc32 6y ago
  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.)
  - elicash 6y ago
    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.
    - rgossiaux 6y ago
      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.
    - jedberg 6y ago
      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.
      - elicash 6y ago
        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.
    - rtkwe 6y ago
      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.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Plus, you have to sign your ballot? It's supposed to be secret.
  - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    You need to have some way to prevent fraud if you're going to allow mail-in ballots.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      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?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - oramit 6y ago
        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-to-work-the-polls-this-november https://www.npr.org/2020/08/05/894331965/wanted-young-people...
        AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        Would it be that hard to put a sheet of clear plastic between the poll workers and the voters?
- thephyber 6y ago
  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.
- poorman 6y ago
  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.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  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.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  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.
- gruez 6y ago
  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.
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    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.
justinzollars 6y ago
I used to run campaigns in Ohio. I was also an elected HRC DNC delegate from 2008. There are some real concerns with vote by mail. One particular issue I noticed when canvassing was that the voter roll was incorrect. It was not uncommon to go to a rental unit, and have 3 or 4 families registered at the address - all having moved out years ago. Another issue was dead voters. Another issue was no one was registered at the address. The voter rolls not dependable. It's not by design, but its a hard problem to solve. Its worth listening to the concerns "of the other side" so that we have fair elections.
- thingymajig 6y ago
  I would agree with listening to the concerns of "the other side", but thus far their concerns do not include good-faith attempts at solving problems. Largely their "concerns" seem to be that vote-by-mail will circumvent the large amount of effort they've spent to make it harder for poor people to vote. The president has literally said that he doesn't like vote-by-mail because it makes it impossible for him to win and called it a coup. How do you even begin to work with that?
  - osrec 6y ago
    Can those that disagree with the above comment explain why? Genuinely interested, as the comment seems to be accurate based on a handful of Google searches I just did.
    - Covzire 6y ago
      Ironically perhaps, but the GP's post is decidedly not in "good-faith" IMO. The argument that Republicans want to "make it harder for poor people to vote" is a red herring regarding the voter ID debate. Similarly, Trump's position on mail-in-ballots, as far as I can tell, is that that the expected ease of large scale voter fraud by relatively few bad actors will make it impossible to win. I have no clue if that's true or not, but to frame the stated claim without also acknowledging the underlying potential issue seems misleading.
    - 6y ago
spanhandler 6y ago
Looks like 1) about 1/2 of them are due to plain ol' User Error (not that there isn't room to improve the "UI" so that happens less) like not signing, not including required parts, simply leaving the ballot out of the envelope entirely(!), and so on, 2) 1/4 are "signature didn't match" (most of those are probably false negatives and should have counted, I'd bet, but given other issues I wouldn't be surprised if people in the same household accidentally signing one another's ballots or something else silly like that is some measurable part of the problem) and, 3) 1/4 are other :-/ [EDIT] looks like most of the "other" category is probably a couple towns in one county having a vote so screwed-up that 3,200 ballots were rejected en masse. That's about 20% of the rejected ballots, or about 2% of the total vote, right there.
- Arnavion 6y ago
  >simply leaving the ballot out of the envelope entirely(!) Some / all of those could've been intentional no-votes, just like leaving your ballot blank would be in an in-person vote.
- kelnos 6y ago
  So I guess we can say that at most 5% of the ballots were rejected for a "good" reason; that is, for a reason that might be related to actual fraud. But in reality it's probably much lower, since for #2 it's pretty much a given that a lot of those are false positives (as you suggest), and presumably not all of the #3 cases are fraud. Is that good? Bad? At the very least, if there are fraud attempts, it's good that they're being caught? It's just lame that at least 5% of ballots, and probably more, are being rejected due to ballot UX issues or a broken verification process.
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    Right: false positive from the perspective of catching fraud, false negative from the perspective of accepting good ballots, is what I mean, exactly. Same thing, different way of phrasing it. Anyone know what the rejection rate for in-person paper ballots is, in the US, typically? It's hard to judge how much worse this is at successful voting than in-person with paper. My gut tells me increased participation would dwarf even a hard 10% rejection rate, assuming no improvement could be made, and if the in-person rejection rate's not near-zero then it's really a big win, but maybe not. Meanwhile stories like this are making me really nervous about the public perception of November's vote, regardless how well they're actually run.
siculars 6y ago
I recently had to sign many, many papers at a bank. They specifically told me to make sure my signature matched the one on my state drivers license. Looks like someone sold some hand writing similarity software in the name of fraud detection. Also, for the children! /Comments my own, not my employers.
- Gunax 6y ago
  It's so odd... Like what constitutes a similarity? Do people not change their signature between 12 and 50?
moksly 6y ago
It always amazes me how one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world has such a shitty voting system. Big American tech companies know when you’re pregnant before you do, but the government doesn’t know who lives in a specific house. So weird.
- adsjhdashkj 6y ago
  It's by design, i imagine. Like difficult to do taxes.
- gpanders 6y ago
  > but the government doesn’t know who lives in a specific house. So weird. This seems to me a feature, not a bug.
  - Eugeleo 6y ago
    Genuine question: What’s the benefit? And how would you solve the vote-by-mailproblems the US has now because of this?
- j_walter 6y ago
  There is no federal system, so it's left to the states. Unfortunately some states are good at some things and shitty at others. Take my state...we rarely have vote by mail issues (100% for at least a decade now), but we also gave hundreds of millions to Nigerian scam artists in unemployment benefits recently. All governments have very poor performance when they require scaling up a system quickly...so do many companies, but sadly they seem to have people who are better equipped and motivated to do so.
- thingymajig 6y ago
  It's a very hard problem. I live next to a multi-family house in a college town and the tenants move in and out so frequently that I'm not even 100% sure who lives there... and I'm 10 feet away. Hell, I could probably only roughly estimate the total number of people that live there. I wonder if there's a solution in there though... maybe landlords should have to report tenants on their federal taxes or something?
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Qasaur 6y ago
I don't understand why voter ID is such a big deal in the United States. In my country (Sweden) you cannot vote without identifying yourself with a state-issued ID card or passport, no exceptions. If you for some reason lack both you need to have someone that can affirm your identity (and they need to show their own identification papers). Nobody complains about it because it is a necessary precondition for a fair and rigorous democratic system and everyone implicitly agrees upon this. If you don't like it then don't participate. I don't buy the argument that it disenfranchises voters. Even the poorest in my country are able to vote despite having these voter ID restrictions. India also has some form of voter ID too, and their population is almost triple the American population and substantially poorer. I can't help but think that there is some kind of malicious intent behind the opposition to voter ID, but it is unfortunately very difficult to prove.
- glofish 6y ago
  Democrats believe that people without an ID will vote for then since these people are most likely living off government programs hence Democrats ought to be (though not guaranteed) their choice. It is not malicious inasmuch they are pushing for it solely because they think they will benefit from this process. If it were the other way around they would oppose it.
  - evan_ 6y ago
    Republicans know that requiring ID to vote will prevent poor people who are legally eligible to vote from voting If it costs $15 to get an ID and you need an ID to vote, then it costs $15 to vote. Poll taxes are illegal.
    - ThA0x2 6y ago
      The IDs that are required to vote in Republican states are either free of charge, or they allow alternative ID documents. Texas being a fine example: https://www.votetexas.gov/mobile/id-faqs.htm https://www.votetexas.gov/mobile/id-faqs.htm
evan_ 6y ago
I wonder if the signatures actually didn't match, or if someone bulk-challenged votes based on demographics (either perceived from the name or from an actual list of registered voters by campaign contributions or zip codes).
verylittlemeat 6y ago
I keep seeing people say "user error" to these problems as if that's an acceptable answer to a quarter of submitted votes being rejected. These are mistakes that are caught and resolved with in person voting. I'm not in the camp that thinks mail in voting is impossible but these are real problems that need to be solved before November. For our country this is an unprecedented election, it deserves more respect than being explained away by partisan politics.
davidw 6y ago
Vote by mail works very well here in Oregon. Indeed, we only vote by mail. Here's our Republican secretary of state saying so: https://www.myoregon.gov/2020/06/19/vote-by-mail-works-especially-in-a-pandemic/ https://www.myoregon.gov/2020/06/19/vote-by-mail-works-espec...
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  >There are many security measures to guard against fraud, including a signature line on the outside of the envelope that is checked against a digital signature on file. Every single ballot envelope signature is compared to the signature in the voter file to make sure it is a match. Our election workers are trained in forensic handwriting analysis to determine whether a signature matches. Each ballot return envelope contains a unique barcode that cannot be duplicated to make sure that voters can only return one ballot. Voters can even go online to track their ballot to confirm that it was received and counted. It is a system that costs less, is more secure, and has a paper trail. There is a difference between a system that has been running for years and evolved to work, and one that is put together in an emergency. Some things of note. 1) They check signatures and the election workers have training in forensic handwriting analysis. 2) They use unique barcodes to prevent duplicates 3) They have a way to make sure your ballot was received and counted. I bet that for a lot of states ramping up mail in voting, they are missing one or more of the above.
  - baddox 6y ago
    > There is a difference between a system that has been running for years and evolved to work, and one that is put together in an emergency. Some things of note. I don't really understand this argument. You list some things that we should do to have a secure vote-by-mail election, but you seem to be phrasing your argument as if it's an argument against vote-by-mail elections.
    - GhostVII 6y ago
      It is not an argument against vote-by-mail elections, it is an argument against mail elections on a short notice, where we don't have the time to implement those things effectively.
zxcvbn4038 6y ago
That headline isn't anything to be proud of, I'm not sure if 10% is supposed to sound significant or insignificant, but at any sort of scale 10% is enough to potentially change a close election. What we don't have for comparison a similar breakdown for elections in physical polling places. Politicians engage in all sorts of squabbling and shenanigans every election in attempts to knock votes off of opponent's tallies. I'm sure the difference between votes cast and votes counted is pretty substantial in any election. If the rates are similar then this is not much of a headline at all.
vaidhy 6y ago
One of the key problems is in verifying citizenship. None of the existing identities work well for this. I remember when India introduced Aadhar card, it was explicitly mentioned that it is not a proof of citizenship and there was a "challenge" to come up with a good identity proof for citizenship.
madballster 6y ago
That's one of the reasons why the US makes it only to spot #25 on the democracy index and earned the "flawed democracy" label.
- refurb 6y ago
  According to who? A left wing non-profit?
  - Traster 6y ago
    You know, that question can be answered by Googling right? It's run by The Economist Intelligence Unit, a for-profit company that does research and analysis, part of the company that sells "The Economist" newspaper. You could call it left-wing - as long as you're comfortable with people thinking you're an ill-informed partisan.
nisuni 6y ago
I know everyone in certain social circles is pressured into saying that vote-by-mail is the best thing ever, because the Orange Man said that vote-by-mail is bad and you must be on the other side. However, it’s time to admit that vote-by-mail has huge problems and it’s more prone to fraud.
- djaque 6y ago
  The article explicitly says that this wasn't 10% fraud. Please leave your political views at the door.
  - nisuni 6y ago
    I never said that the article says that it’s fraud. I said, taking full responsibility for it, that vote-by-mail is more prone to fraud. Why should I leave my political views at the door? Is because they don’t align with yours?
    - Traster 6y ago
      The reason you should leave your political views at the door because you're trying to pass them off as facts. >vote-by-mail is more prone to fraud. That is simply not supported by any evidence.
      - nisuni 6y ago
        > The reason you should leave your political views at the door because you're trying to pass them off as facts. Never tried to do so, you must be mistaken. > That is simply not supported by evidence. It is.
GhostVII 6y ago
I don't see why we can't just have in person voting, but require masks. Given that we didn't see any significant spike in COVID after the protests, when people were packed together and shouting, it is pretty clear that the virus doesn't spread significantly when you are outside with a mask. I think the risks of 10% of the votes being thrown out are far greater than the risk of a slight increase in COVID spread.
- Traster 6y ago
  At the very least you need a universal option to vote by mail. There's a few good reasons: 1. People are going to make individual judgements about how high the risk is and you don't want people making the choice between safety and voting. 2. It is disproportionately more difficult for people to vote in some areas[1]- making the risk different. 3. What we're seeing more and more are localized outbreaks, where certain areas have a flare up of cases, in those cases you probably don't want to vote in person. 4. People who are self-isolating would be disenfranchised. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-polling-sites-closures-voting https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-pollin...
RickJWagner 6y ago
If you liked Bush v. Gore and the hanging chads, you'll love vote by mail.
trynewideas 6y ago
Just for context since nobody's mentioned it and it looks like a lot of folks here aren't reading the article or EAC surveys, the rejection rate in 2018 general elections was 3%.
qserasera 6y ago
Now all an agitator needs to do now is to send a few obviously dq'ed ballots to influence how people view the election.
admeyer 6y ago
My signature has small variations each time I sign. Enough so that it currently does not match what's on my driver's license. I foresee many ballots thrown out depending if they require exact matches to how you signed your voter registration. I hope there is an easy way for me to check if my mail-in ballot is thrown out.
google234123 6y ago
200+ comments and 100 upvotes. Hmm, seems like some people don't want this information spread.
thephyber 6y ago
A larger figure (21%) was reported by NYPost[1] in a recent NYC election. The worst part about paper ballots (mail-in, ink, or hanging chads) is that the intent must be re-interpreted by someone other than the voter at a time after it's too late for the voter to fix any issues. [1] https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/84000-mail-in-ballots-disqualified-in-nyc-primary-election/amp/ https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/84000-mail-in-ballots-disquali...
lennydizzy 6y ago
given how effective IRS is, can we vote with our tax return?
- lennydizzy 6y ago
  that is if you reject my vote, I don't need to pay tax for a year
  - google234123 6y ago
    imagine how much deliberate voter fraud would happen if that was true :)
richwater 6y ago
This election is going to be an absolute circus
grizzles 6y ago
States need to open all in person polling places right away and keep them open to election day to prevent a civil war. This isn't going to be a normal election. Social distancing over time instead of space.
goldenManatee 6y ago
This is a good headline. Without reading anything else, there’s at least two assumptions to draw from reading it: * they caught 10% of votes for being fraudulent * they stopped 10% of voters from exercising their right
viraptor 6y ago
I was curious and checked the numbers from the last Polish presidential election where the postal votes are not super common, but also a normal occurence. The results are also split by the type of specific mistakes (card not signed, envelopes not handled properly, etc), but I'll ignore it here. The counts are: - 704,016 voting cards sent out (2% of registered voters) - 614,662 cards received back (87%) - 593,205 cards valid (84% of sent / 96% of returned) I thought that 10% is a pretty high number (and obviously should be worked on), but for context, 4% seems to be a "normal under covid" number if the rules are pretty simple (2 envelope layers + signed slip).
jones1618 6y ago
Everyone is concentrating on the wrong thing. There are two possible kinds of voter fraud (both extremely rare), "retail fraud" (i.e. individual voters) and "wholesale fraud" (i.e. bulk fraud). Voter ID laws mostly "fix" a non-existent problem of individual false votes with the express intent of discouraging votes. The real problem you want to fix is "wholesale fraud" which means securing the whole system from voting machines (which should be open-source and paper-audited) to how votes are tallied. Think about it. If you were going to steal votes would you go to all the trouble to forge or hijack individual votes or would you bribe someone to flip a couple of digits at a county office? Of course, a trustworthy system includes how mail-in votes are tracked and verified but that is a well-understood problem working well for thousands and thousands of absentees, military personnel and whole states full of people who have voted that way regularly for decades.

184 points by Alupis 6y ago

> 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.

mc32 6y ago
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.)
- elicash 6y ago
  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.
  - rgossiaux 6y ago
    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.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    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.
    - elicash 6y ago
      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.
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    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.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Plus, you have to sign your ballot? It's supposed to be secret.
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  You need to have some way to prevent fraud if you're going to allow mail-in ballots.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    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?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - oramit 6y ago
      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-to-work-the-polls-this-november https://www.npr.org/2020/08/05/894331965/wanted-young-people...
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        Would it be that hard to put a sheet of clear plastic between the poll workers and the voters?
thephyber 6y ago
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.
poorman 6y ago
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.
rtkwe 6y ago
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.
SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
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.
gruez 6y ago
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.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  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.

justinzollars 6y ago

I used to run campaigns in Ohio. I was also an elected HRC DNC delegate from 2008. There are some real concerns with vote by mail. One particular issue I noticed when canvassing was that the voter roll was incorrect. It was not uncommon to go to a rental unit, and have 3 or 4 families registered at the address - all having moved out years ago. Another issue was dead voters. Another issue was no one was registered at the address. The voter rolls not dependable. It's not by design, but its a hard problem to solve. Its worth listening to the concerns "of the other side" so that we have fair elections.

thingymajig 6y ago
I would agree with listening to the concerns of "the other side", but thus far their concerns do not include good-faith attempts at solving problems. Largely their "concerns" seem to be that vote-by-mail will circumvent the large amount of effort they've spent to make it harder for poor people to vote. The president has literally said that he doesn't like vote-by-mail because it makes it impossible for him to win and called it a coup. How do you even begin to work with that?
- osrec 6y ago
  Can those that disagree with the above comment explain why? Genuinely interested, as the comment seems to be accurate based on a handful of Google searches I just did.
  - Covzire 6y ago
    Ironically perhaps, but the GP's post is decidedly not in "good-faith" IMO. The argument that Republicans want to "make it harder for poor people to vote" is a red herring regarding the voter ID debate. Similarly, Trump's position on mail-in-ballots, as far as I can tell, is that that the expected ease of large scale voter fraud by relatively few bad actors will make it impossible to win. I have no clue if that's true or not, but to frame the stated claim without also acknowledging the underlying potential issue seems misleading.
  - 6y ago

spanhandler 6y ago

Looks like 1) about 1/2 of them are due to plain ol' User Error (not that there isn't room to improve the "UI" so that happens less) like not signing, not including required parts, simply leaving the ballot out of the envelope entirely(!), and so on, 2) 1/4 are "signature didn't match" (most of those are probably false negatives and should have counted, I'd bet, but given other issues I wouldn't be surprised if people in the same household accidentally signing one another's ballots or something else silly like that is some measurable part of the problem) and, 3) 1/4 are other :-/ [EDIT] looks like most of the "other" category is probably a couple towns in one county having a vote so screwed-up that 3,200 ballots were rejected en masse. That's about 20% of the rejected ballots, or about 2% of the total vote, right there.

Arnavion 6y ago
>simply leaving the ballot out of the envelope entirely(!) Some / all of those could've been intentional no-votes, just like leaving your ballot blank would be in an in-person vote.
kelnos 6y ago
So I guess we can say that at most 5% of the ballots were rejected for a "good" reason; that is, for a reason that might be related to actual fraud. But in reality it's probably much lower, since for #2 it's pretty much a given that a lot of those are false positives (as you suggest), and presumably not all of the #3 cases are fraud. Is that good? Bad? At the very least, if there are fraud attempts, it's good that they're being caught? It's just lame that at least 5% of ballots, and probably more, are being rejected due to ballot UX issues or a broken verification process.
- spanhandler 6y ago
  Right: false positive from the perspective of catching fraud, false negative from the perspective of accepting good ballots, is what I mean, exactly. Same thing, different way of phrasing it. Anyone know what the rejection rate for in-person paper ballots is, in the US, typically? It's hard to judge how much worse this is at successful voting than in-person with paper. My gut tells me increased participation would dwarf even a hard 10% rejection rate, assuming no improvement could be made, and if the in-person rejection rate's not near-zero then it's really a big win, but maybe not. Meanwhile stories like this are making me really nervous about the public perception of November's vote, regardless how well they're actually run.

siculars 6y ago

I recently had to sign many, many papers at a bank. They specifically told me to make sure my signature matched the one on my state drivers license. Looks like someone sold some hand writing similarity software in the name of fraud detection. Also, for the children! /Comments my own, not my employers.

Gunax 6y ago
It's so odd... Like what constitutes a similarity? Do people not change their signature between 12 and 50?

moksly 6y ago

It always amazes me how one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world has such a shitty voting system. Big American tech companies know when you’re pregnant before you do, but the government doesn’t know who lives in a specific house. So weird.

adsjhdashkj 6y ago
It's by design, i imagine. Like difficult to do taxes.
gpanders 6y ago
> but the government doesn’t know who lives in a specific house. So weird. This seems to me a feature, not a bug.
- Eugeleo 6y ago
  Genuine question: What’s the benefit? And how would you solve the vote-by-mailproblems the US has now because of this?
j_walter 6y ago
There is no federal system, so it's left to the states. Unfortunately some states are good at some things and shitty at others. Take my state...we rarely have vote by mail issues (100% for at least a decade now), but we also gave hundreds of millions to Nigerian scam artists in unemployment benefits recently. All governments have very poor performance when they require scaling up a system quickly...so do many companies, but sadly they seem to have people who are better equipped and motivated to do so.
thingymajig 6y ago
It's a very hard problem. I live next to a multi-family house in a college town and the tenants move in and out so frequently that I'm not even 100% sure who lives there... and I'm 10 feet away. Hell, I could probably only roughly estimate the total number of people that live there. I wonder if there's a solution in there though... maybe landlords should have to report tenants on their federal taxes or something?

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Qasaur 6y ago

I don't understand why voter ID is such a big deal in the United States. In my country (Sweden) you cannot vote without identifying yourself with a state-issued ID card or passport, no exceptions. If you for some reason lack both you need to have someone that can affirm your identity (and they need to show their own identification papers). Nobody complains about it because it is a necessary precondition for a fair and rigorous democratic system and everyone implicitly agrees upon this. If you don't like it then don't participate. I don't buy the argument that it disenfranchises voters. Even the poorest in my country are able to vote despite having these voter ID restrictions. India also has some form of voter ID too, and their population is almost triple the American population and substantially poorer. I can't help but think that there is some kind of malicious intent behind the opposition to voter ID, but it is unfortunately very difficult to prove.

glofish 6y ago
Democrats believe that people without an ID will vote for then since these people are most likely living off government programs hence Democrats ought to be (though not guaranteed) their choice. It is not malicious inasmuch they are pushing for it solely because they think they will benefit from this process. If it were the other way around they would oppose it.
- evan_ 6y ago
  Republicans know that requiring ID to vote will prevent poor people who are legally eligible to vote from voting If it costs $15 to get an ID and you need an ID to vote, then it costs $15 to vote. Poll taxes are illegal.
  - ThA0x2 6y ago
    The IDs that are required to vote in Republican states are either free of charge, or they allow alternative ID documents. Texas being a fine example: https://www.votetexas.gov/mobile/id-faqs.htm https://www.votetexas.gov/mobile/id-faqs.htm

evan_ 6y ago

I wonder if the signatures actually didn't match, or if someone bulk-challenged votes based on demographics (either perceived from the name or from an actual list of registered voters by campaign contributions or zip codes).

verylittlemeat 6y ago

I keep seeing people say "user error" to these problems as if that's an acceptable answer to a quarter of submitted votes being rejected. These are mistakes that are caught and resolved with in person voting. I'm not in the camp that thinks mail in voting is impossible but these are real problems that need to be solved before November. For our country this is an unprecedented election, it deserves more respect than being explained away by partisan politics.

davidw 6y ago

Vote by mail works very well here in Oregon. Indeed, we only vote by mail. Here's our Republican secretary of state saying so: https://www.myoregon.gov/2020/06/19/vote-by-mail-works-especially-in-a-pandemic/ https://www.myoregon.gov/2020/06/19/vote-by-mail-works-espec...

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
>There are many security measures to guard against fraud, including a signature line on the outside of the envelope that is checked against a digital signature on file. Every single ballot envelope signature is compared to the signature in the voter file to make sure it is a match. Our election workers are trained in forensic handwriting analysis to determine whether a signature matches. Each ballot return envelope contains a unique barcode that cannot be duplicated to make sure that voters can only return one ballot. Voters can even go online to track their ballot to confirm that it was received and counted. It is a system that costs less, is more secure, and has a paper trail. There is a difference between a system that has been running for years and evolved to work, and one that is put together in an emergency. Some things of note. 1) They check signatures and the election workers have training in forensic handwriting analysis. 2) They use unique barcodes to prevent duplicates 3) They have a way to make sure your ballot was received and counted. I bet that for a lot of states ramping up mail in voting, they are missing one or more of the above.
- baddox 6y ago
  > There is a difference between a system that has been running for years and evolved to work, and one that is put together in an emergency. Some things of note. I don't really understand this argument. You list some things that we should do to have a secure vote-by-mail election, but you seem to be phrasing your argument as if it's an argument against vote-by-mail elections.
  - GhostVII 6y ago
    It is not an argument against vote-by-mail elections, it is an argument against mail elections on a short notice, where we don't have the time to implement those things effectively.

zxcvbn4038 6y ago

That headline isn't anything to be proud of, I'm not sure if 10% is supposed to sound significant or insignificant, but at any sort of scale 10% is enough to potentially change a close election. What we don't have for comparison a similar breakdown for elections in physical polling places. Politicians engage in all sorts of squabbling and shenanigans every election in attempts to knock votes off of opponent's tallies. I'm sure the difference between votes cast and votes counted is pretty substantial in any election. If the rates are similar then this is not much of a headline at all.

vaidhy 6y ago

One of the key problems is in verifying citizenship. None of the existing identities work well for this. I remember when India introduced Aadhar card, it was explicitly mentioned that it is not a proof of citizenship and there was a "challenge" to come up with a good identity proof for citizenship.

madballster 6y ago

That's one of the reasons why the US makes it only to spot #25 on the democracy index and earned the "flawed democracy" label.

refurb 6y ago
According to who? A left wing non-profit?
- Traster 6y ago
  You know, that question can be answered by Googling right? It's run by The Economist Intelligence Unit, a for-profit company that does research and analysis, part of the company that sells "The Economist" newspaper. You could call it left-wing - as long as you're comfortable with people thinking you're an ill-informed partisan.

nisuni 6y ago

I know everyone in certain social circles is pressured into saying that vote-by-mail is the best thing ever, because the Orange Man said that vote-by-mail is bad and you must be on the other side. However, it’s time to admit that vote-by-mail has huge problems and it’s more prone to fraud.

djaque 6y ago
The article explicitly says that this wasn't 10% fraud. Please leave your political views at the door.
- nisuni 6y ago
  I never said that the article says that it’s fraud. I said, taking full responsibility for it, that vote-by-mail is more prone to fraud. Why should I leave my political views at the door? Is because they don’t align with yours?
  - Traster 6y ago
    The reason you should leave your political views at the door because you're trying to pass them off as facts. >vote-by-mail is more prone to fraud. That is simply not supported by any evidence.
    - nisuni 6y ago
      > The reason you should leave your political views at the door because you're trying to pass them off as facts. Never tried to do so, you must be mistaken. > That is simply not supported by evidence. It is.

GhostVII 6y ago

I don't see why we can't just have in person voting, but require masks. Given that we didn't see any significant spike in COVID after the protests, when people were packed together and shouting, it is pretty clear that the virus doesn't spread significantly when you are outside with a mask. I think the risks of 10% of the votes being thrown out are far greater than the risk of a slight increase in COVID spread.

Traster 6y ago
At the very least you need a universal option to vote by mail. There's a few good reasons: 1. People are going to make individual judgements about how high the risk is and you don't want people making the choice between safety and voting. 2. It is disproportionately more difficult for people to vote in some areas[1]- making the risk different. 3. What we're seeing more and more are localized outbreaks, where certain areas have a flare up of cases, in those cases you probably don't want to vote in person. 4. People who are self-isolating would be disenfranchised. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-polling-sites-closures-voting https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-pollin...

RickJWagner 6y ago

If you liked Bush v. Gore and the hanging chads, you'll love vote by mail.

trynewideas 6y ago

Just for context since nobody's mentioned it and it looks like a lot of folks here aren't reading the article or EAC surveys, the rejection rate in 2018 general elections was 3%.

qserasera 6y ago

Now all an agitator needs to do now is to send a few obviously dq'ed ballots to influence how people view the election.

admeyer 6y ago

My signature has small variations each time I sign. Enough so that it currently does not match what's on my driver's license. I foresee many ballots thrown out depending if they require exact matches to how you signed your voter registration. I hope there is an easy way for me to check if my mail-in ballot is thrown out.

google234123 6y ago

200+ comments and 100 upvotes. Hmm, seems like some people don't want this information spread.

thephyber 6y ago

A larger figure (21%) was reported by NYPost[1] in a recent NYC election. The worst part about paper ballots (mail-in, ink, or hanging chads) is that the intent must be re-interpreted by someone other than the voter at a time after it's too late for the voter to fix any issues. [1] https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/84000-mail-in-ballots-disqualified-in-nyc-primary-election/amp/ https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/84000-mail-in-ballots-disquali...

lennydizzy 6y ago

given how effective IRS is, can we vote with our tax return?

lennydizzy 6y ago
that is if you reject my vote, I don't need to pay tax for a year
- google234123 6y ago
  imagine how much deliberate voter fraud would happen if that was true :)

richwater 6y ago

This election is going to be an absolute circus

grizzles 6y ago

States need to open all in person polling places right away and keep them open to election day to prevent a civil war. This isn't going to be a normal election. Social distancing over time instead of space.

goldenManatee 6y ago

This is a good headline. Without reading anything else, there’s at least two assumptions to draw from reading it: * they caught 10% of votes for being fraudulent * they stopped 10% of voters from exercising their right

viraptor 6y ago

I was curious and checked the numbers from the last Polish presidential election where the postal votes are not super common, but also a normal occurence. The results are also split by the type of specific mistakes (card not signed, envelopes not handled properly, etc), but I'll ignore it here. The counts are: - 704,016 voting cards sent out (2% of registered voters) - 614,662 cards received back (87%) - 593,205 cards valid (84% of sent / 96% of returned) I thought that 10% is a pretty high number (and obviously should be worked on), but for context, 4% seems to be a "normal under covid" number if the rules are pretty simple (2 envelope layers + signed slip).

jones1618 6y ago

Everyone is concentrating on the wrong thing. There are two possible kinds of voter fraud (both extremely rare), "retail fraud" (i.e. individual voters) and "wholesale fraud" (i.e. bulk fraud). Voter ID laws mostly "fix" a non-existent problem of individual false votes with the express intent of discouraging votes. The real problem you want to fix is "wholesale fraud" which means securing the whole system from voting machines (which should be open-source and paper-audited) to how votes are tallied. Think about it. If you were going to steal votes would you go to all the trouble to forge or hijack individual votes or would you bribe someone to flip a couple of digits at a county office? Of course, a trustworthy system includes how mail-in votes are tracked and verified but that is a well-understood problem working well for thousands and thousands of absentees, military personnel and whole states full of people who have voted that way regularly for decades.