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Let's say that you brought in signature experts to look for fraudulent ballots, based on detecting forged signatures. What do you think their false positive /

Let's say that you brought in signature experts to look for fraudulent ballots, based on detecting forged signatures. What do you think their false positive / false negative rates would look like?

dilap 6y ago
Beats me; given the historically low rate & the allegations of fraud, it seems to be you should do the review so that everyone can be confident in the results (in the event there was not significant fraud) or so that the fraud can be exposed (in the event there was). One data point is in Arizona where the judge allowed 100 randomly-sampled envelopes to be reviewed for a signature, the democratic expert witness said 16 of them were inconclusive. However, the Judge ruled that that was not evidence of fraud. I'm not really sure how exactly you can conclude that, and the fact that we are apprently counting votes in AZ with signatures that don't match certainly doesn't make me particularly confident in the results. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/04/arizona-judge-rejects-republican-effort-overturn-state-election-results/3821578001/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020...
- nl 6y ago
  The whole point is that signature verification isn't a reliable indicator of fraud or anything. It never has been, and should never have been relied on. The ballots and the envelopes and the protection of them is the key.
  - dilap 6y ago
    In that case, what protects against fraud? Anything? I personally know of two ballots, not mine, that I could have filled and out returned, if I'd been so inclined. (People in apartment buildings I have access to who have moved out of state, but still got sent ballots, which were just setting in the foyer; I'm sure there are gazillions of other ways to get ballots.) If you're not even going to require the signatures to match, it seems like committing vote fraud would be ridiculously easy. (Of course, if you really want to have a secure election, make people vote in person and have a continuous chain of custody of those votes; use the ink-on-your-finger trick to prevent double-voting.)
    - jaccarmac 6y ago
      The fact that it's quite obvious if someone votes multiple times. To sway an election, you would need to submit a significant number of fraudulent ballots. This is likely to result in an extremely high number of detected duplicates. It is also extremely hard to pull off without involving a large number of people, any of whom could blow the entire conspiracy wide open.
      - dilap 6y ago
        OK. Why not allow an audit of the envelope signatures?
        nl 6y ago
        Because signatures can't be verified. In AZ the Judge asked them to sample 100, and 6/100 were "inconclusive"
        dilap 6y ago
        It seems crazy to me to count ballots with signatures that don't (reasonably) match. If I had believed one or the other of the candidates were a threat on the level Hitler, I would certainly have taken the opportunities given to me to fill out and return ballots that were not mine. You don't need any conspiracy for this; you just have to have one side that is extremely motivated to defeat the other side combined w/ a lack of signature standards.
        VikingCoder 6y ago
        I think you're underestimating how exceedingly difficult it would be to correctly identify the people that you could steal their vote, and not get caught. Picture it, if you try to vote for someone, and they also vote - in person, or requesting another ballot - that's trivially detectable. That didn't happen.
        6y ago

Let's say that you brought in signature experts to look for fraudulent ballots, based on detecting forged signatures. What do you think their false positive / false negative rates would look like?

dilap 6y ago

Beats me; given the historically low rate & the allegations of fraud, it seems to be you should do the review so that everyone can be confident in the results (in the event there was not significant fraud) or so that the fraud can be exposed (in the event there was). One data point is in Arizona where the judge allowed 100 randomly-sampled envelopes to be reviewed for a signature, the democratic expert witness said 16 of them were inconclusive. However, the Judge ruled that that was not evidence of fraud. I'm not really sure how exactly you can conclude that, and the fact that we are apprently counting votes in AZ with signatures that don't match certainly doesn't make me particularly confident in the results. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/04/arizona-judge-rejects-republican-effort-overturn-state-election-results/3821578001/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020...

nl 6y ago
The whole point is that signature verification isn't a reliable indicator of fraud or anything. It never has been, and should never have been relied on. The ballots and the envelopes and the protection of them is the key.
- dilap 6y ago
  In that case, what protects against fraud? Anything? I personally know of two ballots, not mine, that I could have filled and out returned, if I'd been so inclined. (People in apartment buildings I have access to who have moved out of state, but still got sent ballots, which were just setting in the foyer; I'm sure there are gazillions of other ways to get ballots.) If you're not even going to require the signatures to match, it seems like committing vote fraud would be ridiculously easy. (Of course, if you really want to have a secure election, make people vote in person and have a continuous chain of custody of those votes; use the ink-on-your-finger trick to prevent double-voting.)
  - jaccarmac 6y ago
    The fact that it's quite obvious if someone votes multiple times. To sway an election, you would need to submit a significant number of fraudulent ballots. This is likely to result in an extremely high number of detected duplicates. It is also extremely hard to pull off without involving a large number of people, any of whom could blow the entire conspiracy wide open.
    - dilap 6y ago
      OK. Why not allow an audit of the envelope signatures?
      - nl 6y ago
        Because signatures can't be verified. In AZ the Judge asked them to sample 100, and 6/100 were "inconclusive"
        dilap 6y ago
        It seems crazy to me to count ballots with signatures that don't (reasonably) match. If I had believed one or the other of the candidates were a threat on the level Hitler, I would certainly have taken the opportunities given to me to fill out and return ballots that were not mine. You don't need any conspiracy for this; you just have to have one side that is extremely motivated to defeat the other side combined w/ a lack of signature standards.
        VikingCoder 6y ago
        I think you're underestimating how exceedingly difficult it would be to correctly identify the people that you could steal their vote, and not get caught. Picture it, if you try to vote for someone, and they also vote - in person, or requesting another ballot - that's trivially detectable. That didn't happen.
        6y ago