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Most countries, including EU nations, ban mail-in voting minus exceptions like living abroad, these laws being passed because of discovered fraud in elections.

Most countries, including EU nations, ban mail-in voting minus exceptions like living abroad, these laws being passed because of discovered fraud in elections. Election integrity is the difference between democracy and a one-party state. Every citizen should be bending over backwards to make sure our elections dont have sources of fraud.

unethical_ban 5y ago
Your premise that mail-in ballots were a source of significant fraud has been proven false. Edit: Election integrity is important. So is access to voting. It seems completely obvious to me (and millions of others, it seems) that the so-called election integrity measures taken by places like Florida and Texas are blatant attempts to restrict access to legitimate voting for the kinds of people that tend to vote Democrat.
productivepizza 5y ago
Can you provide links with information on countries that have discovered election fraud and banned mail-in voting? I could not find anything with a quick google search.
- aigo 5y ago
  In the UK we did discover some postal voting fraud in a 2014 local election in an area of London called Tower Hamlets. We did not ban postal voting as a result. We have, however, imported a voter ID law from the US which was recently passed by the Johnson government, despite no voter impersonation occurring in Tower Hamlets (or anywhere else really). Previously, no ID was required.
  - snovv_crash 5y ago
    Many other countries have mandatory IDs anyways, so in these cases ID presentation isn't problematic. The issue with ID verification is when only people with eg. a driver's license have IDs.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    I think the majority of "postal voting fraud" in the UK consists of very patriarchal families in which the father directs family members as to how to vote, and submits the votes himself. Arguably, this isn't much different from persuading people to change their voting intentions, which is entirely legitimate. Postal voting used to be restricted to people who could show that they were unable to vote in-person, e.g. because they were in the armed services. I disapprove strongly of that patriarchal practice; but (1) I doubt it has much effect on outcomes, (2) mandatory in-person voting wouldn't prevent it (the patriarch can still instruct his family members). I also disapprove of early voting. I believe that to cast a vote legitimately, you have to pay some attention to the hustings and the arguments. That is not a barricade I will die defending, though - the tide is against me. AFAIAA, the UK has not imported a voter ID law from the US. There was a trial at the last election, in a handful of constituencies, and there is mandatory photographic ID for voting in Northern Ireland. A voter ID law was proposed in the Queen's Speech, but no legislation has been tabled or debated. For the most part, voters receive a poll card in the post, which they don't have to produce at the polling station. You can just turn up, state your name and address, and cast a ballot. Your name is then crossed-out in the voter register, so that the same name-and-address can't vote more than once.
    - selimthegrim 5y ago
      Are they still prosecuting "undue spiritual influence" cases in the UK?
      - denton-scratch 5y ago
        Wut? Wow - https://lawandreligionuk.com/2016/08/30/undue-spiritual-influence-where-next/ https://lawandreligionuk.com/2016/08/30/undue-spiritual-infl... I thought you were going on about voting while under the influence of spirits.
- useragent86 5y ago
  Ah, so that's how to farm karma on a brand-new account: 1. Find a comment that's been so heavily downvoted that it's nearly invisible. 2. Make a new account. 3. Post an ostensibly reasonable comment simply asking for links to substantiate the obviously unpopular opinion. 4. Collect upvotes from all the accounts that downvoted the parent. As of now, the new account has 12 karma from posting only that. It's like some kind of reverse brigading. "Productive" indeed!
freshpots 5y ago
Not discovered fraud. Fears of frauds, stoked by some with nefarious intentions. Why are you making factually incorrect claims? A number of countries, with competent government leaders and institutions, use it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting
sonotathrowaway 5y ago
The biggest threat to democracy has occurred from people who espouse language just like this, in several recent instances: the insurrection attempt on January 6th, where conspirators attempted to use violence to overturn a free and fair election, in Michigan, where factions of that same ideology planned the kidnapping and public execution of democratically elected leaders, and spates of domestic terrorism across the United States, notably in California and Minneapolis, where far right paramilitary fighters firebombed police stations and executed federal officers. It’s always concerning to see such hardline rhetoric being propagated without being disputed, especially as it just implicitly assumes that completely unfounded claims of fraud are being used to push extremist agendas which have been found in multiple jurisdictions to be little more than re-enactments of 1960’s era disenfranchisement.
- pyronik19 5y ago
  If you think the last election was above board I have a bridge to sell you.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    Why did the Arizona audit, operated by right-aligned organizations, find more votes for Biden?
  - stonogo 5y ago
    Nobody wants to buy a bridge, we want you to provide evidence for your assertions.
    - sonotathrowaway 5y ago
      The people prone to this thinking aren’t really able to objectively evaluate evidence, the idea is that it’s plainly true and you need to accept it as well. The evidence they usually provide assumes that you will also accept unfounded, baseless allegations as factually true and proven, and when you point out the logical inconsistencies they’ll just swap that out with another bad argument. It’s not really useful to attempt to rationally engage with them, they didn’t rationally come to their conclusions.
dr-detroit 5y ago
its a fraud if we dont for for the orange israelite Drumph
philjohn 5y ago
Need a citation on that. UK has universal mail-in-voting for any reason. Some US states also have universal mail-in-voting, and have done for some time. The counterpoint to "make sure elections don't have sources of fraud" is that you need to strike a balance - the right to vote is sacrosanct (and in some cases was hard won) so any laws that pretend to be about election integrity, but are in fact a way to suppress voting in certain demographics are arguably more dangerous than the exceedingly low levels of fraud that elections have.
- cmh89 5y ago
  My state in the US (Oregon) has had universal mail-in voting for two decades and we don't have any voter fraud to speak of. There isn't really a debate here. Anyone complaining about voter fraud is uninformed or purposefully making a bad faith argument in order to justify voter disenfranchisement.
  - whatthesmack 5y ago
    > we don't have any voter fraud to speak of You probably mean you're not aware of any voter fraud. The whole objective of fraud is to have it not be discovered, so it's possible fraud has in fact been occurring and it has not yet been discovered (and/or nobody in a position to do so is interested in discovering it).
    - Frondo 5y ago
      In a 2016 audit by the then-Republican Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, 54 potential cases of voter fraud were found, out of more than 2 million votes cast. > Richardson said the suspicious ballots broke down into several categories: 46 voters appeared to vote in Oregon and another state; six individuals listed as deceased voted; and two voters registered in Oregon voted twice. From: https://www.opb.org/news/article/voter-fraud-oregon-secretary-state/ https://www.opb.org/news/article/voter-fraud-oregon-secretar... If you have better evidence, not conjecture, please say so.
    - Supermancho 5y ago
orangepurple 5y ago
There is basically zero public evidence of election fraud in the US. It's irrelevant. What matters is the people who are in charge of developing, handling, and operating the voting machines and systems. There is zero public information about the chain of custody and potential vulnerabilities in the chain. This should be vastly more concerning.

unethical_ban 5y ago

Your premise that mail-in ballots were a source of significant fraud has been proven false. Edit: Election integrity is important. So is access to voting. It seems completely obvious to me (and millions of others, it seems) that the so-called election integrity measures taken by places like Florida and Texas are blatant attempts to restrict access to legitimate voting for the kinds of people that tend to vote Democrat.

productivepizza 5y ago

Can you provide links with information on countries that have discovered election fraud and banned mail-in voting? I could not find anything with a quick google search.

aigo 5y ago
In the UK we did discover some postal voting fraud in a 2014 local election in an area of London called Tower Hamlets. We did not ban postal voting as a result. We have, however, imported a voter ID law from the US which was recently passed by the Johnson government, despite no voter impersonation occurring in Tower Hamlets (or anywhere else really). Previously, no ID was required.
- snovv_crash 5y ago
  Many other countries have mandatory IDs anyways, so in these cases ID presentation isn't problematic. The issue with ID verification is when only people with eg. a driver's license have IDs.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  I think the majority of "postal voting fraud" in the UK consists of very patriarchal families in which the father directs family members as to how to vote, and submits the votes himself. Arguably, this isn't much different from persuading people to change their voting intentions, which is entirely legitimate. Postal voting used to be restricted to people who could show that they were unable to vote in-person, e.g. because they were in the armed services. I disapprove strongly of that patriarchal practice; but (1) I doubt it has much effect on outcomes, (2) mandatory in-person voting wouldn't prevent it (the patriarch can still instruct his family members). I also disapprove of early voting. I believe that to cast a vote legitimately, you have to pay some attention to the hustings and the arguments. That is not a barricade I will die defending, though - the tide is against me. AFAIAA, the UK has not imported a voter ID law from the US. There was a trial at the last election, in a handful of constituencies, and there is mandatory photographic ID for voting in Northern Ireland. A voter ID law was proposed in the Queen's Speech, but no legislation has been tabled or debated. For the most part, voters receive a poll card in the post, which they don't have to produce at the polling station. You can just turn up, state your name and address, and cast a ballot. Your name is then crossed-out in the voter register, so that the same name-and-address can't vote more than once.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    Are they still prosecuting "undue spiritual influence" cases in the UK?
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      Wut? Wow - https://lawandreligionuk.com/2016/08/30/undue-spiritual-influence-where-next/ https://lawandreligionuk.com/2016/08/30/undue-spiritual-infl... I thought you were going on about voting while under the influence of spirits.
useragent86 5y ago
Ah, so that's how to farm karma on a brand-new account: 1. Find a comment that's been so heavily downvoted that it's nearly invisible. 2. Make a new account. 3. Post an ostensibly reasonable comment simply asking for links to substantiate the obviously unpopular opinion. 4. Collect upvotes from all the accounts that downvoted the parent. As of now, the new account has 12 karma from posting only that. It's like some kind of reverse brigading. "Productive" indeed!

freshpots 5y ago

Not discovered fraud. Fears of frauds, stoked by some with nefarious intentions. Why are you making factually incorrect claims? A number of countries, with competent government leaders and institutions, use it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting

sonotathrowaway 5y ago

The biggest threat to democracy has occurred from people who espouse language just like this, in several recent instances: the insurrection attempt on January 6th, where conspirators attempted to use violence to overturn a free and fair election, in Michigan, where factions of that same ideology planned the kidnapping and public execution of democratically elected leaders, and spates of domestic terrorism across the United States, notably in California and Minneapolis, where far right paramilitary fighters firebombed police stations and executed federal officers. It’s always concerning to see such hardline rhetoric being propagated without being disputed, especially as it just implicitly assumes that completely unfounded claims of fraud are being used to push extremist agendas which have been found in multiple jurisdictions to be little more than re-enactments of 1960’s era disenfranchisement.

pyronik19 5y ago
If you think the last election was above board I have a bridge to sell you.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Why did the Arizona audit, operated by right-aligned organizations, find more votes for Biden?
- stonogo 5y ago
  Nobody wants to buy a bridge, we want you to provide evidence for your assertions.
  - sonotathrowaway 5y ago
    The people prone to this thinking aren’t really able to objectively evaluate evidence, the idea is that it’s plainly true and you need to accept it as well. The evidence they usually provide assumes that you will also accept unfounded, baseless allegations as factually true and proven, and when you point out the logical inconsistencies they’ll just swap that out with another bad argument. It’s not really useful to attempt to rationally engage with them, they didn’t rationally come to their conclusions.

dr-detroit 5y ago

its a fraud if we dont for for the orange israelite Drumph

philjohn 5y ago

Need a citation on that. UK has universal mail-in-voting for any reason. Some US states also have universal mail-in-voting, and have done for some time. The counterpoint to "make sure elections don't have sources of fraud" is that you need to strike a balance - the right to vote is sacrosanct (and in some cases was hard won) so any laws that pretend to be about election integrity, but are in fact a way to suppress voting in certain demographics are arguably more dangerous than the exceedingly low levels of fraud that elections have.

cmh89 5y ago
My state in the US (Oregon) has had universal mail-in voting for two decades and we don't have any voter fraud to speak of. There isn't really a debate here. Anyone complaining about voter fraud is uninformed or purposefully making a bad faith argument in order to justify voter disenfranchisement.
- whatthesmack 5y ago
  > we don't have any voter fraud to speak of You probably mean you're not aware of any voter fraud. The whole objective of fraud is to have it not be discovered, so it's possible fraud has in fact been occurring and it has not yet been discovered (and/or nobody in a position to do so is interested in discovering it).
  - Frondo 5y ago
    In a 2016 audit by the then-Republican Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, 54 potential cases of voter fraud were found, out of more than 2 million votes cast. > Richardson said the suspicious ballots broke down into several categories: 46 voters appeared to vote in Oregon and another state; six individuals listed as deceased voted; and two voters registered in Oregon voted twice. From: https://www.opb.org/news/article/voter-fraud-oregon-secretary-state/ https://www.opb.org/news/article/voter-fraud-oregon-secretar... If you have better evidence, not conjecture, please say so.
  - Supermancho 5y ago

orangepurple 5y ago

There is basically zero public evidence of election fraud in the US. It's irrelevant. What matters is the people who are in charge of developing, handling, and operating the voting machines and systems. There is zero public information about the chain of custody and potential vulnerabilities in the chain. This should be vastly more concerning.