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What good is a paper audit when the ballots can be mixed with boxes of “mail-in votes” that ultimately get separated from their envelopes, breaking their chain

What good is a paper audit when the ballots can be mixed with boxes of “mail-in votes” that ultimately get separated from their envelopes, breaking their chain of provenance? You can keep counting them, and the count will match each time, but can you verify that each ballot you’re counting originated from exactly one registered voter? If you think this is evidence of a secure election, I have an unpickable lock to sell you. Anyone repeating the talking point that this was “the most secure election ever” sounds like a partisan hypocrite, especially when you can find videos of Democratic Congress members warning about the security of elections as recently as in 2017. Or, maybe it’s a coincidence that polls asking questions about election security – an objectively non-partisan topic – find a distribution of opinions weirdly aligned with support for the red or blue team.

jcrawfordor 5y ago
Mail-in ballots must be separated from their envelopes. This is the only accepted way to achieve a secret ballot, which is required by constitution or law in most US elections. That is, losing the provenance of the ballot is the point of the voting process.
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  If only there were some sort of academic discipline... a science of sorts... that spent time solving problems like this. Alas, anonymous verifiable signatures must be impossible.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    Zero-knowledge proofs and Monero have so far proven effective. It is odd how on a tech forum, when you bring up utilizing technology for voting that you are suddenly downvoted.
ttyprintk 5y ago
Let’s say your state makes you vote in person. You’re handed a ballot and fraudulently vote multiple times, undetected by the busy poll workers. But, your multiple votes are detected later when the roll is scanned. The box containing your ballot is numbered, and workers need to manually find and remove your fraud. Mail-in ballots are no different. A limited, known number are printed. The system prioritizes in-person ballots in case the mailed one is filled out under pressure. Some states forbid unique ballot tracking, using theoretically non-unique identifiers.

jcrawfordor 5y ago

Mail-in ballots must be separated from their envelopes. This is the only accepted way to achieve a secret ballot, which is required by constitution or law in most US elections. That is, losing the provenance of the ballot is the point of the voting process.

TechBro8615 5y ago
If only there were some sort of academic discipline... a science of sorts... that spent time solving problems like this. Alas, anonymous verifiable signatures must be impossible.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Zero-knowledge proofs and Monero have so far proven effective. It is odd how on a tech forum, when you bring up utilizing technology for voting that you are suddenly downvoted.

ttyprintk 5y ago

Let’s say your state makes you vote in person. You’re handed a ballot and fraudulently vote multiple times, undetected by the busy poll workers. But, your multiple votes are detected later when the roll is scanned. The box containing your ballot is numbered, and workers need to manually find and remove your fraud. Mail-in ballots are no different. A limited, known number are printed. The system prioritizes in-person ballots in case the mailed one is filled out under pressure. Some states forbid unique ballot tracking, using theoretically non-unique identifiers.