8 ms·

You find a bunch of people that can't or wouldn't vote and collect their automatically mailed ballots, fill them out and have them dropped off in boxes. That's

You find a bunch of people that can't or wouldn't vote and collect their automatically mailed ballots, fill them out and have them dropped off in boxes. That's one way to illegally harvest votes. One that almost certainly occurred in nursing homes around the country in the last election.

thenewwazoo 4y ago
> almost certainly occurred Citation, please.
- mmcgaha 4y ago
  Let me google that for you: https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2022/02/24/macomb-county-nursing-home-worker-pleads-guilty-in-attempted-election-fraud-case/ https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2022/02/24/macomb-county-nursin... https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2020/11/12/texas-nursing-home-worker-charged-134-counts-election-fraud-n352006 https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2020/11/12/texas-nursing-home-w... https://www.apr.org/2007-07-13/two-charged-with-voter-fraud-in-south-alabama https://www.apr.org/2007-07-13/two-charged-with-voter-fraud-... https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/4th-resident-of-villages-florida-retirement-community-charged-with-voter-fraud/ https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/4th-resident-of-villages-f... https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/wisconsin-sheriff-wants-charges-filed-over-nursing-home-vote https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/wisconsin-sheriff-wants... https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/vote-fraud-election-seniors-pennsylvania-20171103.html https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/vote-fraud-election-sen...
  - LocalPCGuy 4y ago
    All told those cases total less than 200 votes. No one (edit: to be clear - no reasonable folk) claims fraud doesn't happen. Just not on the scale that has been claimed at times, and not enough to tip an election with millions of votes. Could a coordinated attack swing a local race, maybe. But as seen by the links you provided, there are people watching for these kinds of fraud, and people get caught all the time, even when it's just a single extra vote, much less enough to actually make a difference.
    - mistermann 4y ago
      > No one claims fraud doesn't happen. False. I've encountered easily thousands of people who make such claims on the internet. You might then say "No officials make such claims" - here you're technically correct, but somewhat misinformative: the people in such situations have public relations professionals at their disposal, and also tend to have years of experience (or at least observation) of how to do PR. When election fraud is discussed, they choose their words carefully, opting to discuss not election fraud, but massive election fraud. If the topic was other than this one (if "the shoe was on the other foot" so to speak), I don't think these things would be hard to notice...but, human psychology is what it is, so here we are. > But as seen by the links you provided, there are people watching for these kinds of fraud, and people get caught all the time, even when it's just a single extra vote, much less enough to actually make a difference. This is speculation, stated in the form of a fact - this, combined with the topic, may cause readers to form a belief that it is necessarily factual.
      - LocalPCGuy 4y ago
        Yes, individuals just as mistaken as those who claim fraud is rampant claim there is not fraud. People make those kinds of mistaken statements all the time. How about "most reasonable people who understand the process and have spent a little bit of time examining how it works"? I thought that was closer to the standard in discussions on HN, not "some rando on Twitter spouting off", but I guess not. It is not speculation that there are people who look for election fraud (and then prosecute it when found). And folks do get caught/prosecuted for just about every election cycle, so "all the time". And the links demonstrate that. I may have expounded on that a bit but the language is not speculative except maybe the portion about whether or not there is enough to make a difference. That is my opinion, but heavily based on the reading on this topic I have done, checking claims from a wide variety of sources, parties, etc. I make no claims to expertise but I do believe the information I have shared is accurate to the best of my ability and folks can do with that what they will (hopefully spend their own time actually making sure they are not misled).
        mistermann 4y ago
  - Bud 4y ago
    If you're going to mock someone for not googling, you better come up with the goods: real evidence of substantial fraud in a quantity that would make a difference. Otherwise, keep the sarcastic BS to yourself. Please.
    - mmcgaha 4y ago
      I feel like you missed the context. upsidesinclude wrote: > You find a bunch of people that can't or wouldn't vote and collect their automatically mailed ballots, fill them out and have them dropped off in boxes. >That's one way to illegally harvest votes. One that almost certainly occurred in nursing homes around the country in the last election. thenewwazoo replied: > Citation, please. This isn't about substantial fraud. It is about a very specific source of fraud that upsidesinclude said was likely to have happened.
the_snooze 4y ago
The first step to processing mail ballots is checking that the signature matches the voter's known signature (usually submitted at the time of voter registration). Are you proposing a conspiracy where crooks are somehow forging hundreds (if not thousands) of signatures? And there's no paper trail of communications or money changing hands to coordinate it all?
- hef19898 4y ago
  No signatures where I live, what's next analysis of hand writing? You only get one mail in ballot, which is returned absolutely anonymous. Once you order one, you are struck from the on-site ballot list. You can exchange your mail-in ballot, I think, for a normal paper ballot. if you return the mail-in one. So your solution would mean manually following up every single mail-in ballot and steal it. Assuming you find out who ordered one. using the "left-over" ballots of people not voting, sure, all you have o do is to convince the other 3 to 4 people present at the polling station to go along. and since we have literally thousands of those stations you have to repeat that a lot. And as soon as the participation exceeds the other places, people will investigate. The provisional count done on-site is redone before it is official, so again deviations will be found. And if they are not, congrats, you managed to stuff maybe a dozen ballots, if you are lucky.
- cogman10 4y ago
  Signatures are, frankly, a bad way to determine if a ballot is valid or not. People's signatures change all the time and there's not exactly a science in determining whether or not two are the same. It's ultimately up to the counter to make that determination. Otherwise, I agree with your point. The reason ballot harvesting is much less of an issue than made out is because there's a vast paper trail with each mail in ballot cast.
  - upsidesinclude 4y ago
    That is quite a statement. Especially considering signatures are the primary way ballots are certified. I don't believe 'signatures change' is reasonable or valid. By the time someone reaches adulthood and has an ID, their mark is likely to be quite distinct. Check your grandmother's signature sometime. My point being, that dismissal is not evidence or fact based, but likely aligns with your opinion. >ultimately up to the counter There's absolutely no reason to do that. Digital files already exist of all signatures and the envelope is coded to each voter. The comparison can be done trivially by image processing.
hef19898 4y ago
See, that's why ballots are only sent out when people explicitly ask for them. otherwise you get a single-use invitation that is changed against a ballot at the polling station. Showing up with an ID but without invitation gets you struck from the voter list for that polling station, and it gets you a ballot. So that leaves people that are coerced into asking for mail-in ballots and are then forced to vote a certain way. Without being caught doing it at a scale enough to tip an election. good luck doing that in a system that isn't gerrymandered to the point that one district in, e.g. Florida, can decide a presidential election with only a handful of votes. In a normal system not election is ever close enough that this small scale tempering has any impact on results. Which is exactly why it happens so rarely, and is almost always detected.
- telotortium 4y ago
  Obviously you should only be able to get a mail-in ballot if you request it. But I live in California, and ballots are mailed out to all registered voters. While convenient, it's bonkers to do it at all, let alone in any state that, unlike California, has close elections.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    I still fail to understand why the US has such a hard time figuring out the simolest of things: elections, healthcare, gun control... I mean almost all developed countries did figure those out ages ago. EDIT: Thinking of it, I'll add policing to the list. Made worse by the fact that even dictatorships solved it better then the US, totalitarian regimes tend to have better rules and control over law enforcement resulting in targeted brutality, and not the random variety, inflicted by badly trained and scared officers, the US seems to have.
    - adamrezich 4y ago
      because it's a physically massive Republic of 50 independent States, with lots and lots of disagreement over whether the State or Federal government should have more power.
    - 4y ago
LocalPCGuy 4y ago
And doing that on any kind of scale will undoubtedly end with the perpetrator in jail for voter fraud. It's easy to speculate about how, it's a lot harder to do it in a way that gets away with it without leaving a trail that eventually catches up with them.
- hef19898 4y ago
  And if the fraud is big enough the election in that polling station will be repeated. The more polling stations you have, the harder it is that a single station can impact overall results.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  Yes and no. I would argue that if enough people are doing this on a small scale then there's potential for significant impact. All that is required is the belief that it is imperative your team wins. The ideology that you can be dishonest if you do it for the right reasons grants considerable latitude for these types of corrections. In the case you present, one bad actor is somehow able to manipulate the system en mass. That is certainly likely to draw attention, as you've pointed out.
rootusrootus 4y ago
My state is exclusively postal voting, and checks signatures. If the deviation is too great, the reject the ballot. Has happened to my wife. Inconvenient, but it's a non-trivial hurdle.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  For the sake of integrity, signature checking should be mandatory for every ballot. It would/could be entirely automated anyway. There is no burden on the states to perform the check. Nothing would make me more convinced of an election outcome than having my ballot rejected due to signature comparison and getting the opportunity to cast it again

thenewwazoo 4y ago

> almost certainly occurred Citation, please.

mmcgaha 4y ago
Let me google that for you: https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2022/02/24/macomb-county-nursing-home-worker-pleads-guilty-in-attempted-election-fraud-case/ https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2022/02/24/macomb-county-nursin... https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2020/11/12/texas-nursing-home-worker-charged-134-counts-election-fraud-n352006 https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2020/11/12/texas-nursing-home-w... https://www.apr.org/2007-07-13/two-charged-with-voter-fraud-in-south-alabama https://www.apr.org/2007-07-13/two-charged-with-voter-fraud-... https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/4th-resident-of-villages-florida-retirement-community-charged-with-voter-fraud/ https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/4th-resident-of-villages-f... https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/wisconsin-sheriff-wants-charges-filed-over-nursing-home-vote https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/wisconsin-sheriff-wants... https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/vote-fraud-election-seniors-pennsylvania-20171103.html https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/vote-fraud-election-sen...
- LocalPCGuy 4y ago
  All told those cases total less than 200 votes. No one (edit: to be clear - no reasonable folk) claims fraud doesn't happen. Just not on the scale that has been claimed at times, and not enough to tip an election with millions of votes. Could a coordinated attack swing a local race, maybe. But as seen by the links you provided, there are people watching for these kinds of fraud, and people get caught all the time, even when it's just a single extra vote, much less enough to actually make a difference.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > No one claims fraud doesn't happen. False. I've encountered easily thousands of people who make such claims on the internet. You might then say "No officials make such claims" - here you're technically correct, but somewhat misinformative: the people in such situations have public relations professionals at their disposal, and also tend to have years of experience (or at least observation) of how to do PR. When election fraud is discussed, they choose their words carefully, opting to discuss not election fraud, but massive election fraud. If the topic was other than this one (if "the shoe was on the other foot" so to speak), I don't think these things would be hard to notice...but, human psychology is what it is, so here we are. > But as seen by the links you provided, there are people watching for these kinds of fraud, and people get caught all the time, even when it's just a single extra vote, much less enough to actually make a difference. This is speculation, stated in the form of a fact - this, combined with the topic, may cause readers to form a belief that it is necessarily factual.
    - LocalPCGuy 4y ago
      Yes, individuals just as mistaken as those who claim fraud is rampant claim there is not fraud. People make those kinds of mistaken statements all the time. How about "most reasonable people who understand the process and have spent a little bit of time examining how it works"? I thought that was closer to the standard in discussions on HN, not "some rando on Twitter spouting off", but I guess not. It is not speculation that there are people who look for election fraud (and then prosecute it when found). And folks do get caught/prosecuted for just about every election cycle, so "all the time". And the links demonstrate that. I may have expounded on that a bit but the language is not speculative except maybe the portion about whether or not there is enough to make a difference. That is my opinion, but heavily based on the reading on this topic I have done, checking claims from a wide variety of sources, parties, etc. I make no claims to expertise but I do believe the information I have shared is accurate to the best of my ability and folks can do with that what they will (hopefully spend their own time actually making sure they are not misled).
      - mistermann 4y ago
- Bud 4y ago
  If you're going to mock someone for not googling, you better come up with the goods: real evidence of substantial fraud in a quantity that would make a difference. Otherwise, keep the sarcastic BS to yourself. Please.
  - mmcgaha 4y ago
    I feel like you missed the context. upsidesinclude wrote: > You find a bunch of people that can't or wouldn't vote and collect their automatically mailed ballots, fill them out and have them dropped off in boxes. >That's one way to illegally harvest votes. One that almost certainly occurred in nursing homes around the country in the last election. thenewwazoo replied: > Citation, please. This isn't about substantial fraud. It is about a very specific source of fraud that upsidesinclude said was likely to have happened.

the_snooze 4y ago

The first step to processing mail ballots is checking that the signature matches the voter's known signature (usually submitted at the time of voter registration). Are you proposing a conspiracy where crooks are somehow forging hundreds (if not thousands) of signatures? And there's no paper trail of communications or money changing hands to coordinate it all?

hef19898 4y ago
No signatures where I live, what's next analysis of hand writing? You only get one mail in ballot, which is returned absolutely anonymous. Once you order one, you are struck from the on-site ballot list. You can exchange your mail-in ballot, I think, for a normal paper ballot. if you return the mail-in one. So your solution would mean manually following up every single mail-in ballot and steal it. Assuming you find out who ordered one. using the "left-over" ballots of people not voting, sure, all you have o do is to convince the other 3 to 4 people present at the polling station to go along. and since we have literally thousands of those stations you have to repeat that a lot. And as soon as the participation exceeds the other places, people will investigate. The provisional count done on-site is redone before it is official, so again deviations will be found. And if they are not, congrats, you managed to stuff maybe a dozen ballots, if you are lucky.
cogman10 4y ago
Signatures are, frankly, a bad way to determine if a ballot is valid or not. People's signatures change all the time and there's not exactly a science in determining whether or not two are the same. It's ultimately up to the counter to make that determination. Otherwise, I agree with your point. The reason ballot harvesting is much less of an issue than made out is because there's a vast paper trail with each mail in ballot cast.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  That is quite a statement. Especially considering signatures are the primary way ballots are certified. I don't believe 'signatures change' is reasonable or valid. By the time someone reaches adulthood and has an ID, their mark is likely to be quite distinct. Check your grandmother's signature sometime. My point being, that dismissal is not evidence or fact based, but likely aligns with your opinion. >ultimately up to the counter There's absolutely no reason to do that. Digital files already exist of all signatures and the envelope is coded to each voter. The comparison can be done trivially by image processing.

hef19898 4y ago

See, that's why ballots are only sent out when people explicitly ask for them. otherwise you get a single-use invitation that is changed against a ballot at the polling station. Showing up with an ID but without invitation gets you struck from the voter list for that polling station, and it gets you a ballot. So that leaves people that are coerced into asking for mail-in ballots and are then forced to vote a certain way. Without being caught doing it at a scale enough to tip an election. good luck doing that in a system that isn't gerrymandered to the point that one district in, e.g. Florida, can decide a presidential election with only a handful of votes. In a normal system not election is ever close enough that this small scale tempering has any impact on results. Which is exactly why it happens so rarely, and is almost always detected.

telotortium 4y ago
Obviously you should only be able to get a mail-in ballot if you request it. But I live in California, and ballots are mailed out to all registered voters. While convenient, it's bonkers to do it at all, let alone in any state that, unlike California, has close elections.
- hef19898 4y ago
  I still fail to understand why the US has such a hard time figuring out the simolest of things: elections, healthcare, gun control... I mean almost all developed countries did figure those out ages ago. EDIT: Thinking of it, I'll add policing to the list. Made worse by the fact that even dictatorships solved it better then the US, totalitarian regimes tend to have better rules and control over law enforcement resulting in targeted brutality, and not the random variety, inflicted by badly trained and scared officers, the US seems to have.
  - adamrezich 4y ago
    because it's a physically massive Republic of 50 independent States, with lots and lots of disagreement over whether the State or Federal government should have more power.
  - 4y ago

LocalPCGuy 4y ago

And doing that on any kind of scale will undoubtedly end with the perpetrator in jail for voter fraud. It's easy to speculate about how, it's a lot harder to do it in a way that gets away with it without leaving a trail that eventually catches up with them.

hef19898 4y ago
And if the fraud is big enough the election in that polling station will be repeated. The more polling stations you have, the harder it is that a single station can impact overall results.
upsidesinclude 4y ago
Yes and no. I would argue that if enough people are doing this on a small scale then there's potential for significant impact. All that is required is the belief that it is imperative your team wins. The ideology that you can be dishonest if you do it for the right reasons grants considerable latitude for these types of corrections. In the case you present, one bad actor is somehow able to manipulate the system en mass. That is certainly likely to draw attention, as you've pointed out.

rootusrootus 4y ago

My state is exclusively postal voting, and checks signatures. If the deviation is too great, the reject the ballot. Has happened to my wife. Inconvenient, but it's a non-trivial hurdle.

upsidesinclude 4y ago
For the sake of integrity, signature checking should be mandatory for every ballot. It would/could be entirely automated anyway. There is no burden on the states to perform the check. Nothing would make me more convinced of an election outcome than having my ballot rejected due to signature comparison and getting the opportunity to cast it again