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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. Pict

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?
      - dilap 6y ago
        > 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? Yes, in Georgia at least, that's the process that's supposed to be followed -- if the signature doesn't match, you mail the person, and then they have a chance to mail it back corrected. This actually happened to me the first time I voted, in Oregon. Sort of stupidly, I signed my ballot with a nicer signature than my usual scribble. The sent the ballot back saying the signatures didn't match; I sent it back w/ my scribble. I'm not sure if the vote ended up counted or not...
    - jaccarmac 6y ago
      Of course there's no failsafe automated way to detect double-voting. There's no failsafe automated way to detect anything. In fact, there's no failsafe way to detect anything. But checking for duplicate envelopes is part of the process. That's how duplicate votes are found and thrown out of elections (see the Stokke case). Checking for voter eligibility is part of the process. That's how votes are invalidated (see the report I linked elsewhere in this thread). There is no evidence that ballot fraud exists at a scale which affects elections in the United States. The fact that it exists at all is not a good enough reason to disenfranchise millions of people. Taking tens of thousands of ballots (the number needed to swing the election) from nursing homes will absolutely cause detected double-votes. Not to mention that collecting those tens of thousands of ballots necessarily involves a large number of people. And when a conspiracy includes a large number of people, the chances that someone talks skyrockets.

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?
    - dilap 6y ago
      > 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? Yes, in Georgia at least, that's the process that's supposed to be followed -- if the signature doesn't match, you mail the person, and then they have a chance to mail it back corrected. This actually happened to me the first time I voted, in Oregon. Sort of stupidly, I signed my ballot with a nicer signature than my usual scribble. The sent the ballot back saying the signatures didn't match; I sent it back w/ my scribble. I'm not sure if the vote ended up counted or not...
  - jaccarmac 6y ago
    Of course there's no failsafe automated way to detect double-voting. There's no failsafe automated way to detect anything. In fact, there's no failsafe way to detect anything. But checking for duplicate envelopes is part of the process. That's how duplicate votes are found and thrown out of elections (see the Stokke case). Checking for voter eligibility is part of the process. That's how votes are invalidated (see the report I linked elsewhere in this thread). There is no evidence that ballot fraud exists at a scale which affects elections in the United States. The fact that it exists at all is not a good enough reason to disenfranchise millions of people. Taking tens of thousands of ballots (the number needed to swing the election) from nursing homes will absolutely cause detected double-votes. Not to mention that collecting those tens of thousands of ballots necessarily involves a large number of people. And when a conspiracy includes a large number of people, the chances that someone talks skyrockets.