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CO resident here. CO mails paper ballots to everyone* about a month before election day. You can choose to vote in person, or mail in/drop off your paper ballo

CO resident here. CO mails paper ballots to everyone* about a month before election day. You can choose to vote in person, or mail in/drop off your paper ballot anytime prior to election night. My understanding is what while the ballots are paper, many (all?) are tabulated digitally. It certainly appears to be laid out in a way that benefits digital reading, and i believe that is what the machines in question are responsible for. * for some definition of "everyone"

wannacboatmovie 2y ago
[flagged]
- ForHackernews 2y ago
  Another example of "Everything looks suspicious when you don’t know how anything works."[0] Mailed ballots are verified against voter registrations and signatures are checked against the signature on file. This woman with a bunch of ballots for former residents of her apartment would gain essentially nothing and open herself to serious criminal penalties if she tried to vote as anyone except herself. [0] https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-election-misinformation-trump-dominion-rcna176096 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-electi...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bhk 2y ago
    The article you cite says nothing in direct response to the parent comment (ballot harvesting, etc.). It also includes some misinformation, saying " signature verification is a critical part of ensuring that only valid ballots from eligible voters get counted" ... while many states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Georgia, do not verify signatures. https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/table-14-how-states-verify-voted-absentee-mail-ballots https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/table-14-how-st... Another example of "Nothing looks suspicious when your eyes are closed"?
  - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - decremental 2y ago
      [dead]
- CaliforniaKarl 2y ago
  > You would think AI/ML could help with fraud detection. I think that's a very big leap to make, that the ballots are going to where they're going because of fraud. Hanlon's razor applies. > ballot box stuffing Ballot-box stuffing happens when more ballots are cast than there are people who voted. This is difficult to do when voting by mail. Indeed, from the article: > LeVan Hodson told KING 5, "Even if someone gets a second ballot (or more), whether under their name or someone else’s, we’ll only ever count one ballot per registered voter with their matching signature." When you receive the envelope, you check the signature against what's on file. You also check records to see if the voter had voted elsewhere (such as at an early-voting location). You can check to see if the voter reported not receiving their mail-in ballot. You can do all these checks before opening the envelope. And once you do open the envelope, it's easy to see if multiple ballots had been included in the envelope.
  - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      Or they work at an old folks home.
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        Ah: turns out it was a postman. https://www.npr.org/2024/11/02/nx-s1-5174151/election-2024-voter-fraud-harassment-influencers-elon-musk-x https://www.npr.org/2024/11/02/nx-s1-5174151/election-2024-v... > County officials in Pennsylvania confirmed to local news outlets that the man filmed in the video was an acting postmaster, doing his job. After the video went online, he began receiving threats.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    The signature on my voting registration is the one I used when I first registered 40 years ago when I was still in high school. It’s quite different from my signature today, and it’s never been challenged.
- crooked-v 2y ago
  Once you look past individual anecdotes, the actual rate of voter fraud with mail voting is tiny compared to the voting population. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/minuscule-number-of-potentially-fraudulent-ballots-in-states-with-universal-mail-voting-undercuts-trump-claims-about-election-risks/2020/06/08/1e78aa26-a5c5-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/minuscule-number-of-...
  - gruez 2y ago
    >Once you look past individual anecdotes, the actual rate of voter fraud with mail voting is tiny compared to the voting population. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/minuscule-number-of- https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/minuscule-number-of-... that's hardly reassuring given how close this election is going predicted to be. >The median scenario from our forecast has Ms Harris winning her pivotal 270th electoral-college vote by less than half a percentage point. https://archive.is/uk388 https://archive.is/uk388 https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/10/31/what-to-watch-for-on-election-night-and-beyond https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/10/31/what-to-w...
    - crooked-v 2y ago
      Half a percentage point is orders of magnitude bigger than a 0.0025% fraud rate.
      - zmgsabst 2y ago
        That fraud rate is obviously wrong: There’s more than 4000 questionable ballots in the entire US election.
        gruez 2y ago
        >There’s more than 4000 questionable ballots in the entire US election. source? The most I can find is this: https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/4-000-mail-in-voters-receive-legal-challenge-across-14-counties-update/article_1ad97036-9935-11ef-bb1d-5387a9cc9e78.html https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/4-000-mail-in-voters-... which provides no information for why the ballots were "questionable".
dghlsakjg 2y ago
An interesting aside: I’m an overseas Colorado voter. They lump me in with the military voters so my voting process is super easy (I’m sure certain groups would love to make this harder, but not for the troops). I get an email that my ballot is ready, I go to the CO website, authenticate with my SSN (fucking yikes), fill out my ballot online, print a copy to pdf, slap a digital signature on there, and email it back to the SOS who presumably prints it out and throws it in with the rest, and then get an email saying my vote has been counted. It’s amazing how easy voting can be when we want it to be.
- siffin 2y ago
  When you disregard basic voting security, everything becomes super easy. Mail-in voting allows for vote buying, the only way to avoid this is by having a private in person voting booth so the person voting cannot prove to the outside world who they voted for. Even this isn't secure now, because everyone can just photograph their voting card within the booth.
  - ForHackernews 2y ago
    Do you have any evidence this is happening? In order to swing an election, you'd have to buy a lot of votes. That's a lot of people to rat you out. You're proposing that secret vote-buying conspiracy is going on and thousands of people are all keeping their mouth shut in order to keep getting that... $10, $50, $100 bribe?
    - siffin 2y ago
      I'm not proposing any of that. I'm just saying that voting isn't secure, and that has very real implications. See my other response for more detail.
  - EGG_CREAM 2y ago
    After your very last sentence, I’m not even sure what your point is here. You just listed a bunch of reasons you don’t think mail in ballots are safe, and then ended with saying the alternative also isn’t safe from vote buying. Vote buying also does not appear to be a problem in the US electoral system, as another commented pointed out: in order to make a difference in the election, you’d have to buy enough votes that someone would be bound to tell on you.

wannacboatmovie 2y ago

[flagged]

ForHackernews 2y ago
Another example of "Everything looks suspicious when you don’t know how anything works."[0] Mailed ballots are verified against voter registrations and signatures are checked against the signature on file. This woman with a bunch of ballots for former residents of her apartment would gain essentially nothing and open herself to serious criminal penalties if she tried to vote as anyone except herself. [0] https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-election-misinformation-trump-dominion-rcna176096 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-electi...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bhk 2y ago
  The article you cite says nothing in direct response to the parent comment (ballot harvesting, etc.). It also includes some misinformation, saying " signature verification is a critical part of ensuring that only valid ballots from eligible voters get counted" ... while many states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Georgia, do not verify signatures. https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/table-14-how-states-verify-voted-absentee-mail-ballots https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/table-14-how-st... Another example of "Nothing looks suspicious when your eyes are closed"?
- wannacboatmovie 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - decremental 2y ago
    [dead]
CaliforniaKarl 2y ago
> You would think AI/ML could help with fraud detection. I think that's a very big leap to make, that the ballots are going to where they're going because of fraud. Hanlon's razor applies. > ballot box stuffing Ballot-box stuffing happens when more ballots are cast than there are people who voted. This is difficult to do when voting by mail. Indeed, from the article: > LeVan Hodson told KING 5, "Even if someone gets a second ballot (or more), whether under their name or someone else’s, we’ll only ever count one ballot per registered voter with their matching signature." When you receive the envelope, you check the signature against what's on file. You also check records to see if the voter had voted elsewhere (such as at an early-voting location). You can check to see if the voter reported not receiving their mail-in ballot. You can do all these checks before opening the envelope. And once you do open the envelope, it's easy to see if multiple ballots had been included in the envelope.
- wannacboatmovie 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Or they work at an old folks home.
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      Ah: turns out it was a postman. https://www.npr.org/2024/11/02/nx-s1-5174151/election-2024-voter-fraud-harassment-influencers-elon-musk-x https://www.npr.org/2024/11/02/nx-s1-5174151/election-2024-v... > County officials in Pennsylvania confirmed to local news outlets that the man filmed in the video was an acting postmaster, doing his job. After the video went online, he began receiving threats.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  The signature on my voting registration is the one I used when I first registered 40 years ago when I was still in high school. It’s quite different from my signature today, and it’s never been challenged.
crooked-v 2y ago
Once you look past individual anecdotes, the actual rate of voter fraud with mail voting is tiny compared to the voting population. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/minuscule-number-of-potentially-fraudulent-ballots-in-states-with-universal-mail-voting-undercuts-trump-claims-about-election-risks/2020/06/08/1e78aa26-a5c5-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/minuscule-number-of-...
- gruez 2y ago
  >Once you look past individual anecdotes, the actual rate of voter fraud with mail voting is tiny compared to the voting population. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/minuscule-number-of- https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/minuscule-number-of-... that's hardly reassuring given how close this election is going predicted to be. >The median scenario from our forecast has Ms Harris winning her pivotal 270th electoral-college vote by less than half a percentage point. https://archive.is/uk388 https://archive.is/uk388 https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/10/31/what-to-watch-for-on-election-night-and-beyond https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/10/31/what-to-w...
  - crooked-v 2y ago
    Half a percentage point is orders of magnitude bigger than a 0.0025% fraud rate.
    - zmgsabst 2y ago
      That fraud rate is obviously wrong: There’s more than 4000 questionable ballots in the entire US election.
      - gruez 2y ago
        >There’s more than 4000 questionable ballots in the entire US election. source? The most I can find is this: https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/4-000-mail-in-voters-receive-legal-challenge-across-14-counties-update/article_1ad97036-9935-11ef-bb1d-5387a9cc9e78.html https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/4-000-mail-in-voters-... which provides no information for why the ballots were "questionable".

dghlsakjg 2y ago

An interesting aside: I’m an overseas Colorado voter. They lump me in with the military voters so my voting process is super easy (I’m sure certain groups would love to make this harder, but not for the troops). I get an email that my ballot is ready, I go to the CO website, authenticate with my SSN (fucking yikes), fill out my ballot online, print a copy to pdf, slap a digital signature on there, and email it back to the SOS who presumably prints it out and throws it in with the rest, and then get an email saying my vote has been counted. It’s amazing how easy voting can be when we want it to be.

siffin 2y ago
When you disregard basic voting security, everything becomes super easy. Mail-in voting allows for vote buying, the only way to avoid this is by having a private in person voting booth so the person voting cannot prove to the outside world who they voted for. Even this isn't secure now, because everyone can just photograph their voting card within the booth.
- ForHackernews 2y ago
  Do you have any evidence this is happening? In order to swing an election, you'd have to buy a lot of votes. That's a lot of people to rat you out. You're proposing that secret vote-buying conspiracy is going on and thousands of people are all keeping their mouth shut in order to keep getting that... $10, $50, $100 bribe?
  - siffin 2y ago
    I'm not proposing any of that. I'm just saying that voting isn't secure, and that has very real implications. See my other response for more detail.
- EGG_CREAM 2y ago
  After your very last sentence, I’m not even sure what your point is here. You just listed a bunch of reasons you don’t think mail in ballots are safe, and then ended with saying the alternative also isn’t safe from vote buying. Vote buying also does not appear to be a problem in the US electoral system, as another commented pointed out: in order to make a difference in the election, you’d have to buy enough votes that someone would be bound to tell on you.