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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

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.
      - dilap 6y ago
        Is it really that hard though? Just in nursing homes alone there are way more than enough votes to cover the small margin of victory. And also, how confident can we be that the double-voting would actually be detected? E.g., https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-14/u-s-election-mail-in-voting-isn-t-to-blame-for-double-voting-in-georgia https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-14/u-s-elect... I am not very sympathetic to the argument that we shouldn't care about signature matches.
        jaccarmac 6y ago
        You linked to a news story about double-voting being detected yourself. Said news story also identifies the causes behind double-voting: 1. Delays in inputting data about who had voted in real-time. 2. Poll workers overriding machines to submit ballots. Is there any evidence that these things happened at scale during the general? I would expect that poll workers would be better-trained and that the election would be generally smoother than the primary. In addition, that article makes no mention of nursing homes as a particular source of double votes.
        dilap 6y ago
        For me the take away was there's no failsafe automated way to detect double-voting. Since the ballots themselves become anonymous once removed from the envelopes, I'm not really sure at all how'd you notice double-voting, unless you're doing something to look for duplicate envelopes. I don't there's any automated invalidation of the previous ballot if you request multiple ballots (e.g., if some1 took your first one). Maybe there are more rigerous systems in place than I realize, but I haven't read about it, if so. Re nursing homes, the point there is you can be pretty sure if you take those ballots, you won't risk a double-vote.
        VikingCoder 6y ago
        They check the voter registration while they're opening the envelopes. If there's a double-vote detected, they pull that envelope to the side to investigate more, before they open it and count the vote. Also, I really think you don't get the point of my first question to you. How many false positives and false negatives do you think signature analysis would result in? Because if you're trying to detect a fraudulent signature, and you have false positives, and you then don't count that vote, you have disenfranchised someone. Perhaps you just mean that those envelopes should be pulled aside, and the state should go and track down the person and ask them if its really their signature?
    - jaccarmac 6y ago
      You would have gotten caught then. Signature matching doesn't appreciably increase the security of the election; It simply disenfranchises people based on a shoddy test. Besides, the ballots have long been separated from their signatures. Suppose we take your numbers seriously: The solution is to re-run the election or to let Pelosi become President and run it next year. Letting legislatures choose the president because of FUD is incredibly dangerous.
- jaccarmac 6y ago
  Because handwriting verification is deeply silly.

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.
    - dilap 6y ago
      Is it really that hard though? Just in nursing homes alone there are way more than enough votes to cover the small margin of victory. And also, how confident can we be that the double-voting would actually be detected? E.g., https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-14/u-s-election-mail-in-voting-isn-t-to-blame-for-double-voting-in-georgia https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-14/u-s-elect... I am not very sympathetic to the argument that we shouldn't care about signature matches.
      - jaccarmac 6y ago
        You linked to a news story about double-voting being detected yourself. Said news story also identifies the causes behind double-voting: 1. Delays in inputting data about who had voted in real-time. 2. Poll workers overriding machines to submit ballots. Is there any evidence that these things happened at scale during the general? I would expect that poll workers would be better-trained and that the election would be generally smoother than the primary. In addition, that article makes no mention of nursing homes as a particular source of double votes.
        dilap 6y ago
        For me the take away was there's no failsafe automated way to detect double-voting. Since the ballots themselves become anonymous once removed from the envelopes, I'm not really sure at all how'd you notice double-voting, unless you're doing something to look for duplicate envelopes. I don't there's any automated invalidation of the previous ballot if you request multiple ballots (e.g., if some1 took your first one). Maybe there are more rigerous systems in place than I realize, but I haven't read about it, if so. Re nursing homes, the point there is you can be pretty sure if you take those ballots, you won't risk a double-vote.
        VikingCoder 6y ago
        They check the voter registration while they're opening the envelopes. If there's a double-vote detected, they pull that envelope to the side to investigate more, before they open it and count the vote. Also, I really think you don't get the point of my first question to you. How many false positives and false negatives do you think signature analysis would result in? Because if you're trying to detect a fraudulent signature, and you have false positives, and you then don't count that vote, you have disenfranchised someone. Perhaps you just mean that those envelopes should be pulled aside, and the state should go and track down the person and ask them if its really their signature?
  - jaccarmac 6y ago
    You would have gotten caught then. Signature matching doesn't appreciably increase the security of the election; It simply disenfranchises people based on a shoddy test. Besides, the ballots have long been separated from their signatures. Suppose we take your numbers seriously: The solution is to re-run the election or to let Pelosi become President and run it next year. Letting legislatures choose the president because of FUD is incredibly dangerous.
jaccarmac 6y ago
Because handwriting verification is deeply silly.