6 ms·

What’s your thinking on the “request” process of mail-in ballots? To me, it’s wild to think all one needs to request a ballot is a name, address and ssn... and

What’s your thinking on the “request” process of mail-in ballots? To me, it’s wild to think all one needs to request a ballot is a name, address and ssn... and on top of all of that, you can get the ballot sent to a different address...

Someone1234 6y ago
This quickly goes down the rabbit hole of identity and identity theft in the USA in a more broad sense. Our entire system is build on similarly flimsy "identity" from banking, to medical records, and even getting copies of a birth certificate/driver's license. I would say though that "scale matters." If an electronic voting system is compromised the "scale" could be the entire state, and millions of votes, but each time a mail ballot is stolen via identity theft, you're risking it being detected/getting caught, so it ultimately scales to fewer than thousands of potentially problematic votes (which is bad, but not democracy breakingly so, like electronic/computer voting insecurity).
- anonymouse008 6y ago
  Right on — the thing that worries me most is that Equifax’s breach didn’t cause much of a stir... someone was/is sitting on that trove of 140m records.
alex_young 6y ago
To me it’s wild that anyone would want voting to be anything but universal. Shouldn’t they send ballots to every person legally allowed to vote?
- dosman33 6y ago
  Riiiiight. Just look at how districts are gerrymandered to realize this is not what politicians of either side want.
- pstrateman 6y ago
  Every person legally allowed to vote should be able to vote. No votes should be cast by people not allowed to vote. Mail-in ballots are not secret ballots and that's dangerous. There's a reason a workplace cannot be unionized in the US without a true secret ballot.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    Mail-in ballots are secret ballots. The way they work is that they have two envelopes: you put your ballot in the inner envelope, which has no indication of who is casting the ballot. All of that information is on the outer envelope. When processing the ballot, the information is checked on the outer envelope; once verified, the inner envelope is then handed to another station to be opened and fed into the counting machine while the outer envelope is discarded.
    - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
      > Mail-in ballots are secret ballots I’ve knocked on doors in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Many registered Democrats (usually the wife) denied being Democrats when their partners were around. I thought this was an error in our data until I revisited the neighbourhood. Husband wasn’t home. Wife scolded us. He is an ardent Republican and wouldn’t appreciate how she votes. Mail-in ballots let voters verify their vote to third parties. That opens them up to external influence, positive (pay for votes) or negative (fired for voting wrong). We had no choice this year. But there is a real tradeoff in privacy for vulnerable people. We shouldn't lose sight of that trade-off while pushing for turnout.
      - Larrikin 6y ago
        Isn't the actual problem the abusive relationship and that pressure to vote a certain way a symptom? The solution isn't to ban mail in ballots for those that want to vote that way, but to offer assistance to empower people to get out of that situation. It's already illegal to take a picture of your ballot to address these kinds of abuses.
- throwaway_l33t 6y ago
  Isn’t it reasonable to want the people who make a decision to know what they’re making a decision about? I want all the informed voters to vote but, by and large, uninformed voters make the outcome arbitrary.
  - jlgaddis 6y ago
    I forget who said it and I won't even get the quote exactly right, but I'm reminded of something I once heard: > The greatest thing about a democracy is that every idiot is allowed to vote. > The worst thing about a democracy is that every idiot is allowed to vote.
    - throwaway_l33t 6y ago
      Yeah, the problem is coming up with a test that actually identifies who’s “informed” without biasing the electorate unfairly.
    - jhanschoo 6y ago
      If democracies don't allow idiots to vote, that creates a disenfranchised class that does not accept the government as legitimate. An important role of democracy is to stave off class conflict, arguably just as important or moreso than having a government that serves the people efficiently. A proper long-term solution is to have governments invest in critical thinking skills and education, but of course, it's a catch-22 situation.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Mail in voting is probably secure, but there are enough concerns where many countries with healthy democracies limit who can vote by mail: https://www.newsweek.com/voting-fraud-real-concern-just-look-around-world-opinion-1522535 https://www.newsweek.com/voting-fraud-real-concern-just-look... > Here is what we found. Besides the United States, there are 36 member states in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Forty-seven percent ban mail-in voting unless the citizen is living abroad, and 30 percent require a photo ID to obtain a mail-in ballot. Fourteen percent of the countries ban mail-in voting even for those living abroad.
tylerhou 6y ago
But to return the ballot, you need to match the signature with the one on file, which is very difficult to do at scale.
- jimmygrapes 6y ago
  Unless signature matching is deemed unnecessary as in PA

Someone1234 6y ago

This quickly goes down the rabbit hole of identity and identity theft in the USA in a more broad sense. Our entire system is build on similarly flimsy "identity" from banking, to medical records, and even getting copies of a birth certificate/driver's license. I would say though that "scale matters." If an electronic voting system is compromised the "scale" could be the entire state, and millions of votes, but each time a mail ballot is stolen via identity theft, you're risking it being detected/getting caught, so it ultimately scales to fewer than thousands of potentially problematic votes (which is bad, but not democracy breakingly so, like electronic/computer voting insecurity).

anonymouse008 6y ago
Right on — the thing that worries me most is that Equifax’s breach didn’t cause much of a stir... someone was/is sitting on that trove of 140m records.

alex_young 6y ago

To me it’s wild that anyone would want voting to be anything but universal. Shouldn’t they send ballots to every person legally allowed to vote?

dosman33 6y ago
Riiiiight. Just look at how districts are gerrymandered to realize this is not what politicians of either side want.
pstrateman 6y ago
Every person legally allowed to vote should be able to vote. No votes should be cast by people not allowed to vote. Mail-in ballots are not secret ballots and that's dangerous. There's a reason a workplace cannot be unionized in the US without a true secret ballot.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  Mail-in ballots are secret ballots. The way they work is that they have two envelopes: you put your ballot in the inner envelope, which has no indication of who is casting the ballot. All of that information is on the outer envelope. When processing the ballot, the information is checked on the outer envelope; once verified, the inner envelope is then handed to another station to be opened and fed into the counting machine while the outer envelope is discarded.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > Mail-in ballots are secret ballots I’ve knocked on doors in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Many registered Democrats (usually the wife) denied being Democrats when their partners were around. I thought this was an error in our data until I revisited the neighbourhood. Husband wasn’t home. Wife scolded us. He is an ardent Republican and wouldn’t appreciate how she votes. Mail-in ballots let voters verify their vote to third parties. That opens them up to external influence, positive (pay for votes) or negative (fired for voting wrong). We had no choice this year. But there is a real tradeoff in privacy for vulnerable people. We shouldn't lose sight of that trade-off while pushing for turnout.
    - Larrikin 6y ago
      Isn't the actual problem the abusive relationship and that pressure to vote a certain way a symptom? The solution isn't to ban mail in ballots for those that want to vote that way, but to offer assistance to empower people to get out of that situation. It's already illegal to take a picture of your ballot to address these kinds of abuses.
throwaway_l33t 6y ago
Isn’t it reasonable to want the people who make a decision to know what they’re making a decision about? I want all the informed voters to vote but, by and large, uninformed voters make the outcome arbitrary.
- jlgaddis 6y ago
  I forget who said it and I won't even get the quote exactly right, but I'm reminded of something I once heard: > The greatest thing about a democracy is that every idiot is allowed to vote. > The worst thing about a democracy is that every idiot is allowed to vote.
  - throwaway_l33t 6y ago
    Yeah, the problem is coming up with a test that actually identifies who’s “informed” without biasing the electorate unfairly.
  - jhanschoo 6y ago
    If democracies don't allow idiots to vote, that creates a disenfranchised class that does not accept the government as legitimate. An important role of democracy is to stave off class conflict, arguably just as important or moreso than having a government that serves the people efficiently. A proper long-term solution is to have governments invest in critical thinking skills and education, but of course, it's a catch-22 situation.
rayiner 6y ago
Mail in voting is probably secure, but there are enough concerns where many countries with healthy democracies limit who can vote by mail: https://www.newsweek.com/voting-fraud-real-concern-just-look-around-world-opinion-1522535 https://www.newsweek.com/voting-fraud-real-concern-just-look... > Here is what we found. Besides the United States, there are 36 member states in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Forty-seven percent ban mail-in voting unless the citizen is living abroad, and 30 percent require a photo ID to obtain a mail-in ballot. Fourteen percent of the countries ban mail-in voting even for those living abroad.

tylerhou 6y ago

But to return the ballot, you need to match the signature with the one on file, which is very difficult to do at scale.

jimmygrapes 6y ago
Unless signature matching is deemed unnecessary as in PA