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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 noti

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.
  - ars 6y ago
    The President is opposed to ballots mailed indiscriminately to everyone, and supports those requested by the voter. Based on the comments in this thread it's pretty clear why: People move all the time, and the state does not necessarily have a current address for everyone.
    - osrec 6y ago
      Interesting. Don't they use a unique identifier for each individual though? If someone was to try and vote twice from 2 addresses they simply shouldn't be able to because of the unique identifier. I mean, if they were registered to vote in 2 separate places, they could just drive to 2 different polling stations and vote twice anyway, right?
      - ars 6y ago
        Also the reverse problem: The current resident gets the ballot and tries to vote with it. That's part of the whole signature verification thing that isn't working well. Officially the post office is supposed to do return to sender if the name doesn't match, but I suspect in apartments with frequent turnover they can't realistically do that. Having the voter request the ballot gets rid of all of that trouble.
        rootusrootus 6y ago
        > Also the reverse problem: The current resident gets the ballot and tries to vote with it. Any kind of double voting shenanigans should be pretty straightforward to detect. So when it happens, you [at least] invalidate the second attempt, and forward the details over to the police for investigation and prosecution. The thing about voting is that most of the legwork in verifying voters is done in advance of any election. By the time you get to ballot-casting, the hard part is done.
        ars 6y ago
        Why would there be double voting? The person whose ballot was taken will not vote elsewhere. It's a single vote, just not by the actual voter.
ysavir 6y ago
Would the 2020 census help alleviate the problem in this particular election cycle, since it's so chronologically close?
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Unlikely, as the census can’t share granular census information with other parts of the government for decades. You need improvements in how voting rolls are updated and kept current (I’ve seen voting registration been done at the same time as acquiring a drivers license or state ID at a DMV, for example). There is a lot of power in leaning on existing online resources for performing this work, where your identity and address verification has already been performed (or it can rapidly be performed in a way that is both inexpensive to government and so frictionless it does not disenfranchise the disadvantaged). You just need competent government leadership and technology practitioners who can rapidly glue it together (I know, crazy high hill to climb).
- cbhl 6y ago
  Voter rolls should only contain US citizens. Census is "actual Enumeration” of “all persons", so you'd need to join/filter the data to remove people who are not citizens. Doing so would cause some folks to be afraid/unwilling to fill out the census. 2020 census is especially difficult because they haven't done as much (any?) door-to-door canvassing that usually happens during a census.
  - ideals 6y ago
    They are doing some door knocks. They stopped by my house recently and left a card thing, I wasn't home.
tacomonstrous 6y ago
>There are some real concerns with vote by mail. Any others apart from the voter roll problem? In my state (RI), I have to affirmatively send in a mailed request for a ballot, so the voter roll thing doesn't really enter into the picture.
- taude 6y ago
  I just got mine today in MA, and I didn't know what this was for, since I've never voted by mail. Question: if I register to vote by mail, am I taking away the ability of this to be effective for someone else, i.e. using sacred resources or anything? I personally won't have a problem going to the polls on election day. Guess this is a long winded way of asking, is voting by Mail more/less reliable than going to the local station?
  - andrewem 6y ago
    The state of Massachusetts seems very likely to be able to process ballots by mail for essentially all voters in the primary (September 1!) and general elections. You will be doing your civic duty best by voting by mail rather than going to a polling place in person.
    - taude 6y ago
      i'm actually now more worried (after reading comments below) about my mail-in vote being rejected for mismatched signature or something. Looks like I'll send this in anyway and at least have the option.
      - andrewem 6y ago
        https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleev/early-voting-faq.htm https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleev/early-voting-faq.htm has the official FAQs from the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth and says you can look up whether your ballot was accepted. It's not totally clear what reasons they might use to reject a ballot though.
- 6y ago
slg 6y ago
It is amazing how many problems in the US exist simply because the government lacks knowledge about its people. From the census, to maintaining voter rolls, to mail in voting, to general voter fraud, to stimulus checks going to dead people, to identity theft caused by overuse of SSNs, it could all be solved by having a central database that is updated whenever one of us is born or dies.
- dmix 6y ago
  Hasn’t this been fought against for ages? There’s a reason it’s a mishmash of state driven solutions instead of one big federal ID database. Not to mention the groups who fight against using any form of identification at all during voting.
  - behringer 6y ago
    Of course, and it's also completely unnecessary. We are innocent until proven guilty. If I show up at a polling place (or in this case, requesting or mailing a voting packet), show them some sort of identity and address, then I should be able to vote. If you're caught committing voter fraud, you should go to jail. It's simple, and has always been effective.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      Do you apply the same standard to your bank account? Someone with some sort of identity and address should be able to withdraw your bank account until proven guilty?
      - behringer 6y ago
        That is the standard applied at banks...
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        No they also ask for a unique identifier (bank number) and an access code (PIN) and a token (bank card). That's three-auth. Two things you have to know and one thing you have to have. That's pretty good. I think that's what people are suggesting maybe voting should have.
jsmith99 6y ago
How are the records maintained in the US? In the UK every household gets a form every year on which they reconfirm who is eligible to vote at that address.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  > How are the records maintained in the US? Fifty different ways ;-)
mseidl 6y ago
This is one thing I like about Germany, so you when you move you have to signed paper by the landlord that you're indeed living there. Then you take it to a government building and you "register." Every German is automatically registered and before a vote, maybe a month before hand will get a letter in the mail. They have to use this paper to vote or they can request a mail in ballot. You're assigned a place to vote(you have to go here). But they're always(from my experience really close to the place of residence.
- thephyber 6y ago
  In general, my experience is similar in the USA. However, I think your parent is describing what happens when the previous resident at your address doesn't register a new address. The Elections Department doesn't know if they died, emigrated, moved residences, or they now co-habitate at your address.
thephyber 6y ago
My problem is rarely the diagnosis; it's almost always the prescription. The right solution is to identify all of the sinks and sources (all of the events which allow a voter to be added to or removed from voter eligibility) and work to integrate automated systems in a web. Birth recordings, death recordings, change of residency (at DMV, credit bureaus, tax bodies, etc), change of citizenship, change of felon status, etc. Anything short of this will bias voting for or against "the other side". I'm particularly frustrated by watching some states batch remove names from roles by using substring wildcards and also prevent same-day registration -- together these mean that people are unable to vote with no notice and insufficient time to restore their name to the roles.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  End of the day, exceptions make everything worse for everyone. I grew up in a republican town in New York. The lack of voter id didn’t hurt the local politicians. We should be happy that anybody tries to vote.
- ooobit2 6y ago
  Was it Isaac Asimov who pondered that man's goal is to automate itself out of existence? I don't get this lack of temperament with automation vs. direct labor. I've called out Amazon before, and I stick to my stance that that company is going to boom and bust because it is so automated. Just ponder what the current top complaints are from Amazon customers, regardless of what service they use...? Well, let's head on over to https://www.consumeraffairs.com/online/amazon.html?#sort=helpful&filter=1 https://www.consumeraffairs.com/online/amazon.html?#sort=hel... ... > I contacted customer service through chat on TWO separate occasions ... Well, it was never fixed. > To make matters worse, when you call they are not very helpful ... > Merchandise more often doesn't arrive on guaranteed delivery time and customer service is rather disinterested on resolving any issues. Those are the side effects of depending too heavily on automation. So, the charge that "anything short of [a web of automated services] will bias voting" is itself an insurmountable conflict. 1 in 10 mail-in ballots being rejected is an example of how automation isn't a solution in and of itself. States batch removing names with regex is an example. The same-day voter registration automation having a conflict with the purge of expired voter registrations is an example. Is it ever a smart idea to pour more salt on a wound if the sting is already unbearable? The right solution is a system with enough automation to make the various key election services meet 80% of expected use, and to have people independent of the election provide the necessary checks and balances to resolve anomalous scenarios. Whether that's citizens who surrender their right to vote, or a code that substitutes for the names and PI of candidates and voters, I don't know. But I do know that the sting is already unbearable. Can we just please put away the salt?
Spooky23 6y ago
Was the roll count correlated to multiple votes from the same address? Where I live, you request a ballot and it gets mailed to you, so there is some controls in terms of people registered at old apartments. The voters vulnerable to shenanigans (nursing homes, etc) are equally vulnerable. Personally, I think vote by mail is driving more turnout and is ultimately a good thing. I’m surprised that the GOP is so against it, as it will benefit them in local elections imo.
jcranmer 6y ago
> The voter rolls not dependable. It's not by design, but its a hard problem to solve. I'm not sure why it has to be such a hard problem? If I file taxes in tax year N at a given address, and then file taxes in tax year N + 1 at a different address, then it's pretty clear that I am no longer a resident and should be removed from voter rolls. I'm aware that this doesn't cover everybody, but if you combine a few different such datasets that the government already keeps track of people moving, then you should be able to easily assure that most stale entries are removed in timely (<1 year) fashion.
- jedberg 6y ago
  There are too many cases where you might file taxes in one place but be eligible to vote in another. There are edge cases on pretty much all the datasets. That being said, it doesn't seem like it would be hard to have a national voter database that shows each voter and where they are registered, with the ability to notify districts when someone shows up elsewhere, combined with a national registry of death certificates.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    >There are too many cases where you might file taxes in one place but be eligible to vote in another. // Is the eligibility wrong though? There has been a sort of reverse Gerrymandering [1] in the UK where voters are instructed where to vote to have the most effect, people with second homes (which can include students but otherwise would seem to be exclusively rich people) might qualify this way in the UK. Generally this indicates to me the need for electoral reform. But perhaps tighter regulation about where one may vote (restricting eligibility when one is eligible elsewhere) is also needed in some places? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
- justinzollars 6y ago
  Keeping track of people moving around, when you have privacy rights isn't an easy problem.
- dglass 6y ago
advisedwang 6y ago
Unless someone is using those dead voters or moved-out voters to actually vote, this isn't an actual changing outcomes. If someone eligiable tries to vote but can't then that _is_ changing outcomes.
mason55 6y ago
I moved out of New York State two years ago. I registered in my new state and have voted by mail in my new state multiple times. New York State still has me on the voter rolls there. I tried to find a place to have myself removed but I couldn't even find directions on what to do so I gave up and continue to get spam from candidates in my old district.
- moeadham 6y ago
  Why is this a problem? Because it allows you to commit voter fraud if you choose to?
baddox 6y ago
Why is that concern unique to vote by mail?
eyegor 6y ago
How could you have 3-4 families registered at a single address? Can't you validate against IRS, or drivers license, or utility data to narrow it down? I know that my utility payment info was used when I went to register in a new state - I punched the address into the gov portal and it said "are you eyegor? This information provided by xyz power"
- justinzollars 6y ago
  I have no idea how this happened. But I am telling you what I saw on the ground.
- dglass 6y ago
  IRS would in theory only have the address listed on your most recent tax return. If have moved sometime in 2020, the IRS wouldn't have my new address by the time it came to mailing out ballots for the election in November. My driver's license lists my address when I lived in San Francisco. I don't live there anymore and just haven't been able to update it yet, so that wouldn't work either. Utilities are typically registered under one person's name from the household. So in theory if I have roommates and I'm the name on the utility bill, the utility company wouldn't have the names of all my roommates at my address.
oramit 6y ago
I live in Oregon where all voting is done by mail and it has been done that way for decades. We're not alone either, a few other states and local governments do this. Is the problem with vote by mail itself, or just a bad implementation?
- gojomo 6y ago
  Oregon has had a lot of time to practice. Also, it's a fairly orderly & well-managed state overall. Places improvising mass mail-in voting for the 1st time, and with deeper histories of political-machine voting abuses, are going to have more troubles.
  - mulderc 6y ago
    Virtually all states have some type of vote by mail systems already. They just need the funding to expand them. Something that should have happened long long ago.
    - gojomo 6y ago
      There is no bureaucratic governmental labor-intensive process that "just needs funding" to expand instantly. They also need time & multiple experience/training/improvement cycles. This is especially true in foundational processes where, in some cases, the slow rate of change & large involvement of many competing groups is part of its institutional legitimacy. Oregon's system was incrementally expanded for additional, and larger, elections over 15 years: https://multco.us/elections/brief-history-vote-mail-oregon https://multco.us/elections/brief-history-vote-mail-oregon
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
I was removed from the rolls once despite not having moved or died. Never knew if my provisional ballot was counted or just binned.
pdovy 6y ago
What is the actual attack vector here for taking advantage of incorrect voter rolls? Just that it's easier to vote more than once by mail than in person? Where I am in IL you don't need to show photo ID to vote, so the level of verification that occurs in person vs by mail is the same. Generally it seems like you want the voter rolls to err on the side of being overly broad than vice versa, so long as it doesn't enable fraud - i.e., it's better to leave someone on the voter rolls who has moved/died (who is overwhelmingly unlikely to actually cast a vote) than to disenfranchise a voter by erroneously purging them.
- pc86 6y ago
  Surely sending half a dozen ballots to the same address, for all the previous tenants from the last half decade, "enables fraud" if the person living there is so inclined.
  - djaque 6y ago
    I don't think any scheme that requires people to be willing to commit felony fraud en masse is very likely. They would need to open other people's mail, forge their signature (on my ballot it clearly states that you will go to jail for this) and send it back in. They would need to risk all of that for one extra vote since they are only accidentally receiving an extra ballot. We also don't need to sit around speculating about this because the data we have on voter fraud already tells us that it's incredibly rare. What we should focus on is the 1 in 10 voters here who had a ballot rejected for primarily UX reasons that could be fixed. That's a problem which is supported by facts and could be fixed. Instead the current administration is gutting the USPS and making voting even more difficult in the middle of a pandemic. My ballot application is already taking twice as long to get in as it did last year. How is that OK?
    - yostrovs 6y ago
      You don't know how common voter fraud is. When it's easy to do and you can't be caught, as in other people's ballots coming to your mailbox, many will do it. They do it. I know someone who voted on behalf of another in California because ID is not necessary. There must be many more others doing the same.
ChrisLomont 6y ago
>Its worth listening to the concerns "of the other side" so that we have fair elections We should also look at the lack of voter fraud on any widepsread level before we "solve" the wrong problem and disenfranchise a lot of people. I suspect, from trying to find evidence on people unable to vote and people voting illegally, that we disenfranchise far more people than we allow errorenous votes. It's simple to sample who voted, compare to actual people, and conclude there is no where near a voter fraud problem. (Most states let researchers do just this, and decade in and out, no fraud).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
runako 6y ago
This framing concedes a lot of ground to the folks who seek to make voting more difficult. Where rights are concerned, America typically errs on the side of potentially allowing an illegal action, with the threat of our notorious criminal justice system as the deterrent. For example, we are willing to allow people to carry (without a license) long guns into grocery stores and restaurants under the presumption that they will act responsibly. We don't mandate speed regulators on vehicles. We let people pay bills with checks. Wall Street polices itself. We allow a lot of conduct that could lead to crimes. We aren't in the pre-crime business in America. So to reframe: voting is not a lesser right than being able to carry an unlicensed rifle into a restaurant (which is legal in large parts of America). Let people vote by mail, punish them if they commit voter fraud. The burden is on those who seek to restrict voting to show why voting by mail warrants a much higher level of advance scrutiny than other areas of civil regulation.
maallooc 6y ago
No, mail in ballots good because orange man said it's bad.
tw04 6y ago
It's hard to take "the other side" seriously when every last one of them complaining about mail-in voting... vote by mail themselves. When they can't be bothered to show up to vote but have 150 days a year to golf, I'm not sure how they can tell someone working two minimum wage jobs that they should stand in line for 6+ hours to have the "priveledge" to vote.
bnj 6y ago
Why do you believe it’s not by design?
djaque 6y ago
The reason these votes were thrown out was because of (1) user error (2) signature difficulties (3) "other" of which a tiny amount is going to be fraud. Ballots getting sent to the wrong place isn't the problem here. For this to be an effective attack surface, a significant number of people who get someone else's ballot would have to be willing to commit felony fraud to cast one lousy extra vote. On my ballot, it even says that you will go to jail for X number of years if it isn't you. I just don't believe people are doing this en masse and the data we have on voter fraud supports the idea that it's incredibly rare. I also want to improve our elections, but the scary thing is that we're talking about fraud and not poor ballot UX which is what the article shows is the vast majority of the problem. If I was in charge then I would start there. The reason it's scary is that we have a sitting president who has been claiming against all facts that the last election was rigged and that voter fraud was rampant and that he would have had a landslide victory otherwise. His faction has been spreading misinformation about the current election and polticizing voter fraud (which seems to only happen in the states that don't support him...). In addition, instead of doing anything about all of this alleged fraud, he has appointed a political postmaster to gut the USPS before a historic mail in election. My ballot application is taking twice as long to go in this year conpared to the last. That is scary! How is any of that OK? It's pretty clear what is happening here and we're being set up and narratives written so that if Trump loses in November he can blame it on fraud. That is terrifying. It is literally the core of our democracy being attacked. Whatever happens this November is not going to be good and Trump is driving a lot of that.
GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
Fortunately enough, those types of voter fraud are statistically insignificant. The bigger issue is large scale disenfranchisement, by unregistering voters days before an election.
- creaghpatr 6y ago
  1 in 10 ballots rejected (in the case highlighted by the article) is very statistically significant, if only at the local level.
  - djaque 6y ago
    1 in 10 voters didn't commit fraud. The article is very explicit about that.
  - Sebguer 6y ago
    Did you actually read the article? At no point does it actually state that 1/10 ballots were proof of voter fraud: "Most commonly, officials did not count ballots because the signature on the ballot did not match the one on file, the ballot arrived too late or the required certificate was not enclosed."
    - refurb 6y ago
      I think the point is - they were rejected, but incorrectly. That's just as big of a problem as fraudulent votes.
- javajosh 6y ago
  I've been wondering since 2016 how we can say anything about voter fraud. How do you even measure that?
jablongo 6y ago
It actually is sort of by design. There is no federal administration of elections, that falls to states and counties. It then follows from this that the voter rolls would be fragmented and difficult to consolidate when people move and/or die.
pdelbarba 6y ago
Colorado has vote my mail as the default option and it works fine. If you want to vote, you register, get a ballot in the mail and return it. You can verify that it's counted by following it online and we haven't really had any issues. If you set up the system correctly it'll work just fine.
free_rms 6y ago
Those were campaign voter sheets, not the voter rolls your elections use. I'd bet a large sum of money that Ohio secretaries of state have been very, very on top of purging the official ones whenever they can.
anemoiac 6y ago
Is there any reason to believe that the issues you describe would unfairly benefit one “side” over the other? It seems like restricting vote-by-mail certainly could.

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.
- ars 6y ago
  The President is opposed to ballots mailed indiscriminately to everyone, and supports those requested by the voter. Based on the comments in this thread it's pretty clear why: People move all the time, and the state does not necessarily have a current address for everyone.
  - osrec 6y ago
    Interesting. Don't they use a unique identifier for each individual though? If someone was to try and vote twice from 2 addresses they simply shouldn't be able to because of the unique identifier. I mean, if they were registered to vote in 2 separate places, they could just drive to 2 different polling stations and vote twice anyway, right?
    - ars 6y ago
      Also the reverse problem: The current resident gets the ballot and tries to vote with it. That's part of the whole signature verification thing that isn't working well. Officially the post office is supposed to do return to sender if the name doesn't match, but I suspect in apartments with frequent turnover they can't realistically do that. Having the voter request the ballot gets rid of all of that trouble.
      - rootusrootus 6y ago
        > Also the reverse problem: The current resident gets the ballot and tries to vote with it. Any kind of double voting shenanigans should be pretty straightforward to detect. So when it happens, you [at least] invalidate the second attempt, and forward the details over to the police for investigation and prosecution. The thing about voting is that most of the legwork in verifying voters is done in advance of any election. By the time you get to ballot-casting, the hard part is done.
        ars 6y ago
        Why would there be double voting? The person whose ballot was taken will not vote elsewhere. It's a single vote, just not by the actual voter.

ysavir 6y ago

Would the 2020 census help alleviate the problem in this particular election cycle, since it's so chronologically close?

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Unlikely, as the census can’t share granular census information with other parts of the government for decades. You need improvements in how voting rolls are updated and kept current (I’ve seen voting registration been done at the same time as acquiring a drivers license or state ID at a DMV, for example). There is a lot of power in leaning on existing online resources for performing this work, where your identity and address verification has already been performed (or it can rapidly be performed in a way that is both inexpensive to government and so frictionless it does not disenfranchise the disadvantaged). You just need competent government leadership and technology practitioners who can rapidly glue it together (I know, crazy high hill to climb).
cbhl 6y ago
Voter rolls should only contain US citizens. Census is "actual Enumeration” of “all persons", so you'd need to join/filter the data to remove people who are not citizens. Doing so would cause some folks to be afraid/unwilling to fill out the census. 2020 census is especially difficult because they haven't done as much (any?) door-to-door canvassing that usually happens during a census.
- ideals 6y ago
  They are doing some door knocks. They stopped by my house recently and left a card thing, I wasn't home.

tacomonstrous 6y ago

>There are some real concerns with vote by mail. Any others apart from the voter roll problem? In my state (RI), I have to affirmatively send in a mailed request for a ballot, so the voter roll thing doesn't really enter into the picture.

taude 6y ago
I just got mine today in MA, and I didn't know what this was for, since I've never voted by mail. Question: if I register to vote by mail, am I taking away the ability of this to be effective for someone else, i.e. using sacred resources or anything? I personally won't have a problem going to the polls on election day. Guess this is a long winded way of asking, is voting by Mail more/less reliable than going to the local station?
- andrewem 6y ago
  The state of Massachusetts seems very likely to be able to process ballots by mail for essentially all voters in the primary (September 1!) and general elections. You will be doing your civic duty best by voting by mail rather than going to a polling place in person.
  - taude 6y ago
    i'm actually now more worried (after reading comments below) about my mail-in vote being rejected for mismatched signature or something. Looks like I'll send this in anyway and at least have the option.
    - andrewem 6y ago
      https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleev/early-voting-faq.htm https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleev/early-voting-faq.htm has the official FAQs from the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth and says you can look up whether your ballot was accepted. It's not totally clear what reasons they might use to reject a ballot though.
6y ago

slg 6y ago

It is amazing how many problems in the US exist simply because the government lacks knowledge about its people. From the census, to maintaining voter rolls, to mail in voting, to general voter fraud, to stimulus checks going to dead people, to identity theft caused by overuse of SSNs, it could all be solved by having a central database that is updated whenever one of us is born or dies.

dmix 6y ago
Hasn’t this been fought against for ages? There’s a reason it’s a mishmash of state driven solutions instead of one big federal ID database. Not to mention the groups who fight against using any form of identification at all during voting.
- behringer 6y ago
  Of course, and it's also completely unnecessary. We are innocent until proven guilty. If I show up at a polling place (or in this case, requesting or mailing a voting packet), show them some sort of identity and address, then I should be able to vote. If you're caught committing voter fraud, you should go to jail. It's simple, and has always been effective.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Do you apply the same standard to your bank account? Someone with some sort of identity and address should be able to withdraw your bank account until proven guilty?
    - behringer 6y ago
      That is the standard applied at banks...
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        No they also ask for a unique identifier (bank number) and an access code (PIN) and a token (bank card). That's three-auth. Two things you have to know and one thing you have to have. That's pretty good. I think that's what people are suggesting maybe voting should have.

jsmith99 6y ago

How are the records maintained in the US? In the UK every household gets a form every year on which they reconfirm who is eligible to vote at that address.

rootusrootus 6y ago
> How are the records maintained in the US? Fifty different ways ;-)

mseidl 6y ago

This is one thing I like about Germany, so you when you move you have to signed paper by the landlord that you're indeed living there. Then you take it to a government building and you "register." Every German is automatically registered and before a vote, maybe a month before hand will get a letter in the mail. They have to use this paper to vote or they can request a mail in ballot. You're assigned a place to vote(you have to go here). But they're always(from my experience really close to the place of residence.

thephyber 6y ago
In general, my experience is similar in the USA. However, I think your parent is describing what happens when the previous resident at your address doesn't register a new address. The Elections Department doesn't know if they died, emigrated, moved residences, or they now co-habitate at your address.

thephyber 6y ago

My problem is rarely the diagnosis; it's almost always the prescription. The right solution is to identify all of the sinks and sources (all of the events which allow a voter to be added to or removed from voter eligibility) and work to integrate automated systems in a web. Birth recordings, death recordings, change of residency (at DMV, credit bureaus, tax bodies, etc), change of citizenship, change of felon status, etc. Anything short of this will bias voting for or against "the other side". I'm particularly frustrated by watching some states batch remove names from roles by using substring wildcards and also prevent same-day registration -- together these mean that people are unable to vote with no notice and insufficient time to restore their name to the roles.

Spooky23 6y ago
End of the day, exceptions make everything worse for everyone. I grew up in a republican town in New York. The lack of voter id didn’t hurt the local politicians. We should be happy that anybody tries to vote.
ooobit2 6y ago
Was it Isaac Asimov who pondered that man's goal is to automate itself out of existence? I don't get this lack of temperament with automation vs. direct labor. I've called out Amazon before, and I stick to my stance that that company is going to boom and bust because it is so automated. Just ponder what the current top complaints are from Amazon customers, regardless of what service they use...? Well, let's head on over to https://www.consumeraffairs.com/online/amazon.html?#sort=helpful&filter=1 https://www.consumeraffairs.com/online/amazon.html?#sort=hel... ... > I contacted customer service through chat on TWO separate occasions ... Well, it was never fixed. > To make matters worse, when you call they are not very helpful ... > Merchandise more often doesn't arrive on guaranteed delivery time and customer service is rather disinterested on resolving any issues. Those are the side effects of depending too heavily on automation. So, the charge that "anything short of [a web of automated services] will bias voting" is itself an insurmountable conflict. 1 in 10 mail-in ballots being rejected is an example of how automation isn't a solution in and of itself. States batch removing names with regex is an example. The same-day voter registration automation having a conflict with the purge of expired voter registrations is an example. Is it ever a smart idea to pour more salt on a wound if the sting is already unbearable? The right solution is a system with enough automation to make the various key election services meet 80% of expected use, and to have people independent of the election provide the necessary checks and balances to resolve anomalous scenarios. Whether that's citizens who surrender their right to vote, or a code that substitutes for the names and PI of candidates and voters, I don't know. But I do know that the sting is already unbearable. Can we just please put away the salt?

Spooky23 6y ago

Was the roll count correlated to multiple votes from the same address? Where I live, you request a ballot and it gets mailed to you, so there is some controls in terms of people registered at old apartments. The voters vulnerable to shenanigans (nursing homes, etc) are equally vulnerable. Personally, I think vote by mail is driving more turnout and is ultimately a good thing. I’m surprised that the GOP is so against it, as it will benefit them in local elections imo.

jcranmer 6y ago

> The voter rolls not dependable. It's not by design, but its a hard problem to solve. I'm not sure why it has to be such a hard problem? If I file taxes in tax year N at a given address, and then file taxes in tax year N + 1 at a different address, then it's pretty clear that I am no longer a resident and should be removed from voter rolls. I'm aware that this doesn't cover everybody, but if you combine a few different such datasets that the government already keeps track of people moving, then you should be able to easily assure that most stale entries are removed in timely (<1 year) fashion.

jedberg 6y ago
There are too many cases where you might file taxes in one place but be eligible to vote in another. There are edge cases on pretty much all the datasets. That being said, it doesn't seem like it would be hard to have a national voter database that shows each voter and where they are registered, with the ability to notify districts when someone shows up elsewhere, combined with a national registry of death certificates.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  >There are too many cases where you might file taxes in one place but be eligible to vote in another. // Is the eligibility wrong though? There has been a sort of reverse Gerrymandering [1] in the UK where voters are instructed where to vote to have the most effect, people with second homes (which can include students but otherwise would seem to be exclusively rich people) might qualify this way in the UK. Generally this indicates to me the need for electoral reform. But perhaps tighter regulation about where one may vote (restricting eligibility when one is eligible elsewhere) is also needed in some places? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
justinzollars 6y ago
Keeping track of people moving around, when you have privacy rights isn't an easy problem.
dglass 6y ago

advisedwang 6y ago

Unless someone is using those dead voters or moved-out voters to actually vote, this isn't an actual changing outcomes. If someone eligiable tries to vote but can't then that _is_ changing outcomes.

mason55 6y ago

I moved out of New York State two years ago. I registered in my new state and have voted by mail in my new state multiple times. New York State still has me on the voter rolls there. I tried to find a place to have myself removed but I couldn't even find directions on what to do so I gave up and continue to get spam from candidates in my old district.

moeadham 6y ago
Why is this a problem? Because it allows you to commit voter fraud if you choose to?

baddox 6y ago

Why is that concern unique to vote by mail?

eyegor 6y ago

How could you have 3-4 families registered at a single address? Can't you validate against IRS, or drivers license, or utility data to narrow it down? I know that my utility payment info was used when I went to register in a new state - I punched the address into the gov portal and it said "are you eyegor? This information provided by xyz power"

justinzollars 6y ago
I have no idea how this happened. But I am telling you what I saw on the ground.
dglass 6y ago
IRS would in theory only have the address listed on your most recent tax return. If have moved sometime in 2020, the IRS wouldn't have my new address by the time it came to mailing out ballots for the election in November. My driver's license lists my address when I lived in San Francisco. I don't live there anymore and just haven't been able to update it yet, so that wouldn't work either. Utilities are typically registered under one person's name from the household. So in theory if I have roommates and I'm the name on the utility bill, the utility company wouldn't have the names of all my roommates at my address.

oramit 6y ago

I live in Oregon where all voting is done by mail and it has been done that way for decades. We're not alone either, a few other states and local governments do this. Is the problem with vote by mail itself, or just a bad implementation?

gojomo 6y ago
Oregon has had a lot of time to practice. Also, it's a fairly orderly & well-managed state overall. Places improvising mass mail-in voting for the 1st time, and with deeper histories of political-machine voting abuses, are going to have more troubles.
- mulderc 6y ago
  Virtually all states have some type of vote by mail systems already. They just need the funding to expand them. Something that should have happened long long ago.
  - gojomo 6y ago
    There is no bureaucratic governmental labor-intensive process that "just needs funding" to expand instantly. They also need time & multiple experience/training/improvement cycles. This is especially true in foundational processes where, in some cases, the slow rate of change & large involvement of many competing groups is part of its institutional legitimacy. Oregon's system was incrementally expanded for additional, and larger, elections over 15 years: https://multco.us/elections/brief-history-vote-mail-oregon https://multco.us/elections/brief-history-vote-mail-oregon

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago

I was removed from the rolls once despite not having moved or died. Never knew if my provisional ballot was counted or just binned.

pdovy 6y ago

What is the actual attack vector here for taking advantage of incorrect voter rolls? Just that it's easier to vote more than once by mail than in person? Where I am in IL you don't need to show photo ID to vote, so the level of verification that occurs in person vs by mail is the same. Generally it seems like you want the voter rolls to err on the side of being overly broad than vice versa, so long as it doesn't enable fraud - i.e., it's better to leave someone on the voter rolls who has moved/died (who is overwhelmingly unlikely to actually cast a vote) than to disenfranchise a voter by erroneously purging them.

pc86 6y ago
Surely sending half a dozen ballots to the same address, for all the previous tenants from the last half decade, "enables fraud" if the person living there is so inclined.
- djaque 6y ago
  I don't think any scheme that requires people to be willing to commit felony fraud en masse is very likely. They would need to open other people's mail, forge their signature (on my ballot it clearly states that you will go to jail for this) and send it back in. They would need to risk all of that for one extra vote since they are only accidentally receiving an extra ballot. We also don't need to sit around speculating about this because the data we have on voter fraud already tells us that it's incredibly rare. What we should focus on is the 1 in 10 voters here who had a ballot rejected for primarily UX reasons that could be fixed. That's a problem which is supported by facts and could be fixed. Instead the current administration is gutting the USPS and making voting even more difficult in the middle of a pandemic. My ballot application is already taking twice as long to get in as it did last year. How is that OK?
  - yostrovs 6y ago
    You don't know how common voter fraud is. When it's easy to do and you can't be caught, as in other people's ballots coming to your mailbox, many will do it. They do it. I know someone who voted on behalf of another in California because ID is not necessary. There must be many more others doing the same.

ChrisLomont 6y ago

>Its worth listening to the concerns "of the other side" so that we have fair elections We should also look at the lack of voter fraud on any widepsread level before we "solve" the wrong problem and disenfranchise a lot of people. I suspect, from trying to find evidence on people unable to vote and people voting illegally, that we disenfranchise far more people than we allow errorenous votes. It's simple to sample who voted, compare to actual people, and conclude there is no where near a voter fraud problem. (Most states let researchers do just this, and decade in and out, no fraud).

deleted 6y ago
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runako 6y ago

This framing concedes a lot of ground to the folks who seek to make voting more difficult. Where rights are concerned, America typically errs on the side of potentially allowing an illegal action, with the threat of our notorious criminal justice system as the deterrent. For example, we are willing to allow people to carry (without a license) long guns into grocery stores and restaurants under the presumption that they will act responsibly. We don't mandate speed regulators on vehicles. We let people pay bills with checks. Wall Street polices itself. We allow a lot of conduct that could lead to crimes. We aren't in the pre-crime business in America. So to reframe: voting is not a lesser right than being able to carry an unlicensed rifle into a restaurant (which is legal in large parts of America). Let people vote by mail, punish them if they commit voter fraud. The burden is on those who seek to restrict voting to show why voting by mail warrants a much higher level of advance scrutiny than other areas of civil regulation.

maallooc 6y ago

No, mail in ballots good because orange man said it's bad.

tw04 6y ago

It's hard to take "the other side" seriously when every last one of them complaining about mail-in voting... vote by mail themselves. When they can't be bothered to show up to vote but have 150 days a year to golf, I'm not sure how they can tell someone working two minimum wage jobs that they should stand in line for 6+ hours to have the "priveledge" to vote.

bnj 6y ago

Why do you believe it’s not by design?

djaque 6y ago

The reason these votes were thrown out was because of (1) user error (2) signature difficulties (3) "other" of which a tiny amount is going to be fraud. Ballots getting sent to the wrong place isn't the problem here. For this to be an effective attack surface, a significant number of people who get someone else's ballot would have to be willing to commit felony fraud to cast one lousy extra vote. On my ballot, it even says that you will go to jail for X number of years if it isn't you. I just don't believe people are doing this en masse and the data we have on voter fraud supports the idea that it's incredibly rare. I also want to improve our elections, but the scary thing is that we're talking about fraud and not poor ballot UX which is what the article shows is the vast majority of the problem. If I was in charge then I would start there. The reason it's scary is that we have a sitting president who has been claiming against all facts that the last election was rigged and that voter fraud was rampant and that he would have had a landslide victory otherwise. His faction has been spreading misinformation about the current election and polticizing voter fraud (which seems to only happen in the states that don't support him...). In addition, instead of doing anything about all of this alleged fraud, he has appointed a political postmaster to gut the USPS before a historic mail in election. My ballot application is taking twice as long to go in this year conpared to the last. That is scary! How is any of that OK? It's pretty clear what is happening here and we're being set up and narratives written so that if Trump loses in November he can blame it on fraud. That is terrifying. It is literally the core of our democracy being attacked. Whatever happens this November is not going to be good and Trump is driving a lot of that.

GaryNumanVevo 6y ago

Fortunately enough, those types of voter fraud are statistically insignificant. The bigger issue is large scale disenfranchisement, by unregistering voters days before an election.

creaghpatr 6y ago
1 in 10 ballots rejected (in the case highlighted by the article) is very statistically significant, if only at the local level.
- djaque 6y ago
  1 in 10 voters didn't commit fraud. The article is very explicit about that.
- Sebguer 6y ago
  Did you actually read the article? At no point does it actually state that 1/10 ballots were proof of voter fraud: "Most commonly, officials did not count ballots because the signature on the ballot did not match the one on file, the ballot arrived too late or the required certificate was not enclosed."
  - refurb 6y ago
    I think the point is - they were rejected, but incorrectly. That's just as big of a problem as fraudulent votes.
javajosh 6y ago
I've been wondering since 2016 how we can say anything about voter fraud. How do you even measure that?

jablongo 6y ago

It actually is sort of by design. There is no federal administration of elections, that falls to states and counties. It then follows from this that the voter rolls would be fragmented and difficult to consolidate when people move and/or die.

pdelbarba 6y ago

Colorado has vote my mail as the default option and it works fine. If you want to vote, you register, get a ballot in the mail and return it. You can verify that it's counted by following it online and we haven't really had any issues. If you set up the system correctly it'll work just fine.

free_rms 6y ago

Those were campaign voter sheets, not the voter rolls your elections use. I'd bet a large sum of money that Ohio secretaries of state have been very, very on top of purging the official ones whenever they can.

anemoiac 6y ago

Is there any reason to believe that the issues you describe would unfairly benefit one “side” over the other? It seems like restricting vote-by-mail certainly could.