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Mail-In Ballots Raise Risk of Ballot Fraud by Exposing Name, Address, Signature
See also:
New Data Analysis Finds 353 Counties With 1.8 Million More Registered Voters Than Residents
Officials Allay Concerns That Voter Portals Allow Cancelling Other Voters’ Mail-in Ballots in Some States
Reports Claim 440K Questionable Ballots Sent To Deceased Or Inactive Voters In Calif
In no way is this a partisan statement; it is all about the security of the mail-in ballots and our right to vote with a secret ballot, without which we’re just a banana republic. Yet what we now have now enables exactly that.
My signature and name and address are fully disclosed on the OUTSIDE of the ballot, visible to anyone at a glance, in particular a cell phone camera or similar. I recall that in the past, my absentee ballot had a privacy fold-over flap. So why is my name, address, signature now exposed for anyone to see?
Everyone deserves to have their ballet counted, and everyone deserves the right of privacy. There should not be security weaknesses with ballots, so why can’t we have a double envelope, which would solve this risk entirely? Or go back to the fold-over security flap that I recall using in the past?
Insta-scan ballot against a name/address database?
In short: imagine a QR-code scanner for ballots, referencing name/address against databases.
This is the age of the internet. With OCR via a cell phone and a database, it is short work to look up just about anyone and deduce their party affiliation with high accuracy, by referencing any number of databases.
Off-the-shelf technology with a bit of customization (an "app") would enable anyone person to aim a cell phone at a ballot and get a near-instantaneous readout which could surely approach 90% accuracy by querying appropriate databases. And who knows what is in that bar code—maybe it contains party affiliation outright.
Bad actors need only discard (or delay) a small percentage of “undesirable” ballots , with 2-3% ample to swing a national election—and very difficult to detect. Bad actors could do this at key junctions: mailbox, mailperson*, ballot collection boxes, the tallying point, etc.
Is this being done? I make no claim that is is. But it could be done, and that makes the entire process a petri dish for problems, this election or the next. And it sure as heck is what I would try as a state actor (China, Russia) or an intelligence agency (any country including USA), or any organization seeking to control elections—low-hanging fruit for malefactors.
* The postal service union first endorsed Bernie Sanders, and then Joe Biden. Every day we read about mail-in ballots being found in the trash or similar. Whatever your political views, the idea that a partisan entity should be responsible for ballots is chilling.
Extremely unreliable mail
Mail service this summer has been the worst in 35 years. In just two months, we’ve seen a valuable check go missing (another 2 week delay?), we’ve received DMV license plates for someone a mile away, we’ve seen 2-week delays, we regularly get mail addressed to neighbors, etc. You cannot trust the post office to deliver mail, let alone trust that postal workers or facilities are secure. The delay of mail is election-changing all by itself. In other words, the postal service is so incompetent that malfeasance would scarcely be detectable. At this point, I would NEVER willingly use the US Postal Service for any significant document or check. Why the hell would I trust my ballot to it? Accordingly, I sent and dropped off my ballot in the town ballot collection box.
