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The majority of the U.S. votes on paper: https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/ https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/. Most of the rest of the country votes using

• robomartin 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  • boredatoms 9mo ago
    We’re less worried about a low-scale low impact fraud my many people that is unlikely to alter results, than a systematic mass fraud by few people who can choose a result
    • robomartin 9mo ago
      That's the wrong perspective. The minute votes go into the mail system there is no way to know just how many mail-in votes might be subject to fraud. In other words, your characterization has no basis in evidence. Note that I am not asserting that massive fraud has been committed anywhere. That statement would be as impossible to support with evidence as yours. The only thing you can state with absolute certainty is that mail-in ballots can be subject to manipulation and that this manipulation can reach enough scale to affect results in elections where the margin is so narrow that a few hundred or a few thousand votes can determine who wins. Simple example: We receive eight ballots. There's absolutely nothing to prevent me from filling out all eight of them as I see fit and mailing them. Nothing. There's also nothing to prevent bad actors from destroying ballots in large quantities. Again, do not mischaracterize my statements here. I am not asserting that any of this has happened. I am saying that mail-in ballots enable potentially serious manipulation and are insecure. This is like saying that short passwords are insecure. Lots of people use them safely and never get hacked. We all know they are unsafe. The fact that they might not be insecure enough for the general public to understand the issue (because you don't have news every day showing how many thousands of people are getting hurt) is immaterial. The truth of the matter is independent of the perceived consequences. Short passwords are insecure. Mail-in ballots are insecure.
      • defrost 9mo ago
        > There's absolutely nothing to prevent me from filling out all eight of them as I see fit and mailing them. Nothing. Just as there is nothing to prevent a person threatening or physically coercing 8 members of their household to vote as they direct. This is hard to scale up into the hundreds. WRT mail-in ballots, these are common place in Australia. You post in a provided envelope to the AEC address, that outer envelope indentifies you against the voter rolls, just as you are identified when you attend a physical voting location. The inner sealed envelope contains your voing slip - this is removed and passed on to the "votes from district" counting bucket .. just as all the voting slips from physical voting locations are. In the checksumming of the election the same person being marked down as having voted multiple times, whether at various locations or by multiple mail in ballots, gets caught and investigated. At this point voters are marked off against registration rolls and actual votes are anonymous. This is important in an Australian election as no one should know that someone drew a crude suggestive image of their local member and submitted that. The real downside of mail in voting is missing out on a sausage sizzle with others in your district at a voting location on voting day.
        • baggy_trough 9mo ago
          > Just as there is nothing to prevent a person threatening or physically coercing 8 members of their household to vote as they direct. You are wrong. In person voting in the sanctity of the private voting booth prevents this.
          • robomartin 9mo ago
            You arguing with the wrong person. I am saying that we need to go to in-person paper ballots. The comment you responded to was about the scenario of someone getting a bunch of ballots and filling them out at home or making their household fill them out at home the way he or she might want to.
            • baggy_trough 8mo ago
              Sorry for the misinterpretation.
  • IAmGraydon 9mo ago
    > He has refused every single such requests because, as he put it, if you do for one side or the other, sooner or later you get burned (or worse) and it's over. I have to admit, it's a bit disturbing that his reason for not doing it is because he might get "burned" or caught. How about...you know...because he believes in upholding democracy?
  • Fezzik 9mo ago
    Do you have a citation for voting by mail being demonstrable problematic? None of the things you describe are even true. We’ve been voting by mail in Oregon for decades and the demonstrated instances of voter fraud are effectively zero. The Heritage Foundation, which is opposed to vote by mail, has a great list here: https://electionfraud.heritage.org/search?state=OR https://electionfraud.heritage.org/search?state=OR. I encourage you to click the ‘Read’ tab to see the actual circumstances resulting in the convictions as most are for trying to game ballot signatures and have nothing to do with votes being cast. It just doesn’t happen because the system is secure. Never once has anyone, outside of their expansive imagination, proven that voting by mail is not secure and effective.
    • WillPostForFood 9mo ago
      France is an example. They allowed mail in voting, had issues with fraud, then banned it. https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/57152/why-isnt-mail-in-voting-allowed-in-france https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/57152/why-isnt-...
      • Fezzik 9mo ago
        … in 1975. I have EXCELLENT, current news for you, comrade. Since then, I can point you to six States in the USA that have implemented mail-in voting that is demonstrable secure and gives far more people the ability to vote than mandatory in-person voting. Isn’t that simply wonderful to hear? And, to boot, lest you worry about volume, one of those States alone (sunny California) is nearly the same population as France was in 1975! So even having large populations vote entirely by mail is proven to be a non-issue! Phew, I’m glad we can stop trotting out fear mongering and speculative arguments of unproven inevitable doom to stupidly disenfranchise voters!
        • WillPostForFood 9mo ago
          There are open accusations of mail-in fraud in California, not a settled issue. France is an interesting example because there was fraud, settled issue. It seems obvious, no? 1: Vote in person, with ID 2: Mail ballots out, mail ballots in Which will have more fraud?
  • fzeroracer 9mo ago
    > I have a friend somewhere else in the world who is in the business of providing electronic voting machines to governments (cities and countries) to run elections. I won't mention where in the world because there are only so many of these companies and his is very prominently known in the region he serves. They develop the machines, write the software and provide the service. > He told me stories of various elections across the region where governments or specific political parties ask him to tilt the playing field in their favor by secretly altering the code. He has refused every single such requests because, as he put it, if you do for one side or the other, sooner or later you get burned (or worse) and it's over. He happens to be one of the honest and responsible players. That's not necessarily the case for others. Just to be clear, if you are actually telling the truth you have a fundamental duty to reveal the company in question and who is making these requests, as doing so can constitute a felony in many countries across the world. So I recommend you telling us where this is happening.
  • shimman 9mo ago
    Oh nice an anecdote with zero evidence that also implies voting by mail should be illegal (something where there is zero widespread fraud).
  • hansvm 9mo ago
    > Person who shows up to vote is legally allowed to vote How does that work though? What's the root of trust identifying me as me to a government who, at most, has a written record somewhere of my birth, and definitely not enough information to tie that to any particular face or body.
    • robomartin 9mo ago
      I have to present my passport to get on a plane, enter into another country, register into a hotel and return to this country. I have to show either my passport card (another passport-like ID in the US) or my RealID-equipped drivers license to fly within the US. They also make me stand in front of a camera. Nearly every nation on earth does this. It's nothing new. We have the technology and the means. This isn't a problem.
    • trothamel 9mo ago
      In a lot of places, it's a photo ID. Usually that required a birth certificate to get, and often a few more pieces of corroborating information to make it harder.
      • hansvm 9mo ago
        Without a root of trust though, how much good is that? When I needed a copy of my birth certificate to get a CA driver's license, I just sent my home state $10-$20 and pinky promised that I was me. Getting utility bills or whatever delivered to your favorite name isn't hard either. It's cheap and easy to bootstrap your way into somebody's identity. Maybe the payout isn't worth it, but (a) empirically, people seem to be willing to spend a lot more than that per vote if necessary, and (b) it's not substantially harder or riskier to do that than to risk prison voting for a dead person or whatever else some fraudster might cook up; if we think this is an important system which people are trying to rig then the proposed cure just keeps honest people honest.
  • comrh 9mo ago
    The US has had mail in voting for 100 years with no widespread fraud. You're going to have to present more evidence then "what if bad actors use it this way"
  • torton 9mo ago
    Even the most cursory research into mail-in voting shows a number of safeguards designed into the process; one summary can be found at https://responsivegov.org/research/why-mail-ballots-are-secure-layered-safeguards/ https://responsivegov.org/research/why-mail-ballots-are-secu.... Instances of mail based voting fraud are extremely rare despite the extremely high motivation of some actors (such as the current US federal leadership) to find any evidence to the contrary.
    • robomartin 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      • yandie 9mo ago
        Because you can’t make me sign my ballot? Because without my signature the ballot is void. I can also show up in person to cure my vote if you force me to sign it at home btw. It’s not impossible - I won’t deny it. But we haven’t had any substantial evidence despite the current administration trying to claim otherwise. If we are to roll back mail in ballot, let’s also make voter ID free and easy, and also make Election Day the weekend or a public holiday, rather than the various frictions including long lines at the poll.
        • what 9mo ago
          Ballot harvesting is a thing. Activists “kindly” “help” the elderly and dementia addled fill out their ballots.
        • robomartin 9mo ago
          > But we haven’t had any substantial evidence despite the current administration trying to claim otherwise. Take politics out of it. My comments are not at all based on politics or ideology. It's purely a matter of process issues. It's like saying that short passwords are insecure. With regards to your lack of evidence observation, this is actually one of the problems with mail-in voting. There is now way at all to know who filled out the ballot. None. It happens privately. If, on the other hand, voting is in person and with proper identification, there is no doubt. So, lack of evidence is not evidence of a lack of manipulation at all. I'll give you a personal example: As my father succumbed to dementia a couple of years before passing, my mother, who was also pretty old but still mentally functional, would fill out his ballot and have him sign it. I told her many times that she should never do that and that he, due to his dementia, had no business voting. She didn't want to hear it. Before someone says "you should have reported it!". First, you are an asshole. Second, I'd like to see you report your 94 year old mother with pancreatic cancer and your 96 year old father with dementia at the edge of death. Now, if in-person paper voting was required he would not have been able to vote and the same may have been true of her towards the end. I'd be willing to bet this kind of thing happens with some frequency in households. Another one is children who just turn 18 and the parents telling them how to vote. That's just as fraudulent and manipulated. Another friend of ours who isn't interested in being informed and hates politics tells his wife to just fill out the ballots any way she wants.
  • idiotsecant 9mo ago
    Oh yeah? Your source for why mail voting is a shaggy dog friend of a friend definitely real story? Mail voting has routinely been proven to be extraordinarily difficult to exploit at scale. For as much feverish dedication there is to the idea of how terrible it is (for quite obviously partisan benefit) there is absolutely no evidence of any kind of substantial fraud. It's a right wing fever dream exercise in post hoc logic to justify depriving the 'right' people in our society of their vote. Simple as that. Mail voting is common in many systems, it's convenient, and worst of all ... More people vote!! All of which is very dangerous to the power of a certain class of politicians.
• mmooss 9mo ago
  The issue is that the paper ballots are counted electronically. There may be a paper version for double-checking the vote, but it's rarely used. The vote relies almost entirely on electronic technology.
  • firesteelrain 9mo ago
    There are many state-mandated post-election audits that involve random selection of ballots or precincts. There are state statutes and procedures that require a post-election audit of ballots after every election. These audits are designed to verify that voting equipment and tabulations operated correctly and that reported totals are accurate