As I mentioned in this post, I object to the widespread use of mailed ballots, or absentee ballots as they are often called, because I think that they are too vulnerable to vote fraud.
I haven't come to that conclusion without evidence. Judging by the numbers given in John Fund's Stealing Elections, about 30 percent of the votes in the United States are now mailed in. But at least 80 percent of the vote fraud is committed with mailed ballots, judging by the cases that come to court. At least. It might be as high as 90 percent — or even higher. (For a few examples, take a look at the list of vote fraud cases on the right side of my site.) And that in spite of the fact that it is much easier to commit vote fraud with mailed ballots, so it is less likely that those cases will be detected.
There are places in the United States where vote fraud is endemic, where there are well known "vote brokers" who, for a fee, supply votes to candidates every election. In every case I have read about, these vote brokers use mailed ballots. Every case.
Britain's experience with mailed ballots, or as they call them, postal ballots, supports the conclusion that mailed ballots are prone to fraud. Britain experimented with postal voting a few years ago and had an instant epidemic of vote fraud. (The government responded, not by canceling the experiment, but by adding a few controls.) And not just vote fraud, but intimidation, especially, according to the news reports I read, of Muslim women.
You can have widespread voting by mail, or you can have elections that are not prone to vote fraud, but you can't have both. And because more and more voters are beginning to understand what experts on vote fraud have known for years, every close election in this state, and other places where mailed ballots predominate, will be suspect, and every close election will lack legitimacy for many voters.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
Posted by Jim Miller at November 07, 2007 10:54 AM | Email ThisNot that it solves the broader problem, but at least then you can be confident in YOUR OWN vote.
Posted by: pudge on November 7, 2007 11:55 AMNow days, if someone is going to "rig" an election it is a lot easier to "monkey" around with the software, or depress turn-out in an area, than actually trying to "buy" votes. The latter method can be traced easily. It is just as easy for someone to buy a vote for someone going to the polls as it is for them mailing in their ballot.
So, to convince me, you need to do a lot better job of explaining the inherent weaknesses that vote-by-mail has in contrast with the other weaknesses in the system. I have voted by mail the past 10 or so years and have voted a lot more, than if I went to the polls. Vote-by-mail has higher turnout (i.e., more people involved in the process). It also allows one to take their time to decide how to vote, without tieing up a voting booth.
Posted by: tc on November 7, 2007 12:26 PMWhen I voted, I was able to place my ballot in the machine, and watch it being tabulated. It would have taken some *very* suspicious and detetable moneying with the machine to reverse that. At the same time, it was impossible for election workers in Seattle to correlate the ballot with the votes.
In absentee ballots, the votes are *not* anonymous. The envelope is opened, the signature "checked" according to inconsistent and highhly subjective criterea (take a look at Stefans posts in the last several elections). The ballot is visible to the "checker", as is the precinct, etc.
If they don't like the vote, its simple to "lose" the ballot. If the voter manages to find out that his vote wasn't counted (which isn't necessary. Who's checking?) like Brian Suits did last election, the fact that the ballot disappeared can be written off to the postal system losing the ballot.
If you want to disenfranchise entire groups of people (for example, bellevue, issaquah, military people) all you have to do is mail the ballots out the day bfore the deadline. This isn't conjecture: (IT ROUTINELY HAPPENS!)
Also, there is no way to tell who's voting the ballot. At least in the case of a polling place, if the same person shows up time after time it might get suspicious, there is no way to tell that "Captain America" and "Mickey Maus" and the other 700 votes living at the UPS store are all in fact both registered and voted by ACORN workers.
Jeeepers, give your brain a chance!
Posted by: bfr on November 7, 2007 12:43 PMLet me count (some of) the ways. There are some safeguards in place to help with some of these, but they do not eliminate the problems.
1. Far easier to threaten, bribe, extort, or buy votes with vote-by-mail.
2. Far easier to steal someone's vote (make sure their ballot is intercepted one way, or the other).
3. Far easier to steal someone's identity, by forging their signature, instead of checking a photo ID.
4. Far easier to double-vote, where one person is registered multiple times, or votes for multiple legally registered people (including dead people).
And that doesn't even account for the much greater liklihood that your ballot will get simply lost or damaged, or that you might have errors on your ballot that could be caught at the polling place, but cannot be fixed once sent in the mail or dropped off.
Posted by: pudge on November 7, 2007 01:46 PMSecond, I dunno about King County, but here in Snohomish County, mail *votes* are anonymous. There are two envelopes. The exterior envelope contains your name and signature. The internal envelope contains your ballot, your votes. The first phase simple removes the exterior envelope. If it passes all checks, then your internal envelope containing your actual votes is sent for further processing, and it contains no serial number or record of any kind as to who the ballot belongs to. The ballot, the votes, is not visible to the checker.
That said, however, it is possible a checker could "lose" your ballot based on name and precinct, as you said. But it is NOT possible to do so based on the actual votes you've made, at least, not at that point. And the tabulation of votes is done in full view of the public, so it's unlikely anyone would do so at that point.
I hate mail voting, but Snohomish County does about as good a job as is possible with it.
Posted by: pudge on November 7, 2007 01:54 PMRespectfully, resetting the machine (this is the optical scanners) would leave either a paper trail or a Great Big Hole in the precint count.
My understanding is that in King County, the envelope is only sealed until the first count, from what I can tell. They put the ballot back with the envelope after, but it is certainly *not* sealed. Similarly, if the ballot or envelope is judged "faulty" for some reason, well...
Lastly, as has been mentioned elsewhere, *any* defect in the ballot which can be pointed at to disqualify the ballot results in the ballot being tossed. (Oh look! this vote for rossi went outside the lines... welll we certainly can't count that one, can we", versus "oh look, that vote for gregoire seems to have been inadvertently filled in in the rossi square. Well, we'll "correct it", after all the intention of the voter was clear....
The problem is the bias of a small number of counters, only being "observed" from a great distance (like the next building). Again, these are things that have been already been observed, and aren't impossible to do using other mehtods, but are much easier with mail balloting.
Posted by: bfr on November 7, 2007 02:23 PMAgain, I don't know about King County's mail ballots.
However, I do know that a "defect" in the ballot does not disqualify it. Only certain defects allow rejection of the ballot or vote (a name printed on the ballot, multiple ballots sent together, etc.). No counter can EVER reject a ballot because of going outside the lines etc. Only the county canvassing board can do that.
Also, ballots may NEVER be altered, only duplicated to recreate the CLEAR intent of the voter, so the machine can properly tabulate it (and even then only as authorized by the county canvassing board, in teams of two people working together, which is usually a Republican and a Democrat).
Now, yes, there's room for breaking the law, but that's two different issues. You're talking about "bias" and bias is not sufficient to do what you're talking about: it requires a willful violation of the law.
Maybe something similar could be done with mail-in ballots in requiring them to be notarized if the voter has requested such authentication. If a non-notarized ballot shows up at Election Central (TM) under my name, it is treated as if it wasn't signed.
http://novbm.wordpress.com/2007/11/08/poll-votes-much-faster-to-count-then-absentee-ballots/
Anyway, hurray for I-25. I'll be donating to the pro I-25 campaign next year. And whoever is running against Sam Reed with half a brain. Heck half a brain is better than a dellusional non-functioning brain.
Posted by: Gentry Lange on November 8, 2007 10:15 AMAnyway, hurray for I-25. I'll be donating to the pro I-25 campaign next year. And whoever is running against Sam Reed with half a brain. Heck half a brain is better than a dellusional non-functioning brain.
Posted by: Gentry Lange on November 8, 2007 10:17 AMMail voting negates the military vote. Are you kidding? How does a military person overseas vote at the polls? Virtually all military votes are by mail, except when DOD gets its act together and arranges for electonic voting via the internet.
Mail ballots do not protect the privacy of the voter. Wrong. There are three steps in the processing of mail ballots. (1) After the signatures on the envelopes have been checked and accepted, the outer (mailer) envelopes containing the voter's id are opened and removed. (This is done in batches at a time). The ballot remains in the secuity envelope. (2) After the outer envelopes have been stored, the inner (secuirty) envelopes are opened and the ballot removed. (3) After these envelopes have been set aside, the ballot is unfolded and checked to make sure that there is only one ballot, it is for the current election (yes, people have been known to mail in primary ballots in the general election) and that it appears to have been marked properly, i.e., the marks are within the circles. This process is performed under observation by represntatives of the political parties.
You cannot trust the elections staff who are processing the mail ballots but you can trust the people at the polling places. You obviously have never had to hire all the people who work the polling places. 98% of them are good and competent people, but 2% can really screw up an election.
Bottom line is that no matter which way you run the election, it will only be as good as the process that is designed to administer it and the peiple who carry it out. Remember the Presidential election in Florida in 2000? It wasn't the absentee ballots that caused the problems.
Posted by: desert rat on November 8, 2007 12:35 PM
2. Anoymous -- This has been addressed by other posters. In Pierce County, the ballot is anonymous (e.g., sealed in inner envelope that is separated from outer/signature envelope).
3. Loss of ballot -- This is pure speculation with no foundation. Since the ballots are anonymous there would be no way to know whose ballot one is losing. Losing of a box (as demonstrated by KC) is more likely, but this could occur irregardless of voting method (i.e., if the polling place is remote and ballots are collected and sent to central processing, they could also be "lost").
4. Military Voting -- This has also been addressed. The change to all mail in voting does not impact them because they already vote this way.
5. No way to tell who is voting -- Ballots are mailed to the residence at their recorded residence. Voters don't get multiple copies. They get one copy. They sign the outer envelope, just like they sign in at the polls. You assume that ID's will be checked at polls, well the 9/11 highjackers had valid state driver's licenses. Having ID doesn't stop invalid people from voting at polling places. It also doesn't stop people from voting at a couple different polling places (e.g., 2004 Governor election).
Pudge:
Point #1: Coersion of voters -- How is this more likely with mail-in voting? What makes it more likely? A voter can be coerced, irregarless of where they vote. If they are, then they should report it. It doesn't matter if they vote at home or at a polling place.
Point #2: Easier to steal -- This assumes that the safety check of the outer envelope signature is ignored by the people processing the vote. It also assumes that someone doesn't report that they haven't received their mail-ballot. If I am expecting mail and don't receive it, I would sure as heck report it. If a neighborhood has problem with mail theft, then theft of ballots is small on the scale of the other items people steal. This is a neighborhood's problem to solve by getting a secured (locking) mailbox(es) for the neighborhood. Most new developments are putting these in due to the ID theft issues in the area.
Point #3: Steal identity (signature) -- Your assumption is that ID is harder to forge. Have you followed ID Theft lately? Did you know that the 9/11 hijackers had state issued driver's licenses? Having ID doesn't guarantee that the person is actually the person on the ID. This is why the Nation-wide ID proposals are such a joke. Read Bruce Schnier's (Applied Cryptography author and expert on security) blog for how easy it is to defeat many of these systems. The ID Theft people know these facts. It is time you need to educate yourself.
4. Double-voting: Far easier? If I can register multiple times with the county, then I could just as easily vote at multiple polling places in the county (or in different counties). One ballot per registered voter is sent to that voter. It is up to the counties to manage registration and cross-check with the statewide database. How is voting by mail make multiple registration any more susceptible than voting at multiple polling places?
As far as errors on ballots, the ballots used by Pierce county are the Optical Scan type, which have the highest accuracy of any voting system. Errors on ballots depends on the system used, not on method of voting. As far as ballots being lost in the mail, if you are concerned about this, then drop your ballot off at the Post Office or at one of the election drop-off boxes.
Someone else wrote about the time to vote issue. Yes, I do use the voter's guide, and look through it several times. It is nice, however, to have my ballot right there and as I go through a race or ballot measure to mark right on my ballot my decision, instead of having to mark the guide, and then having to transfer that choice to the ballot at the voting place. Not having to go to the voting place also means saving at least a half-an-hour of time, and not having to adjust my day to make sure I can make it to the voting place before it closes.
Posted by: tc on November 8, 2007 01:43 PMLink:http://www.schneier.com/testimony-realid.html
Bruce's blog is at: http://www.schneier.com/blog/
In the archives you will find numerous posts on voting machines and the inherent issues.
Posted by: tc on November 8, 2007 02:07 PMPoint #1: Coersion of voters -- How is this more likely with mail-in voting? What makes it more likely? A voter can be coerced, irregarless of where they vote. If they are, then they should report it. It doesn't matter if they vote at home or at a polling place.
When you vote at a polling place, there's no way that anyone can know how you voted. Someone can threaten you to vote a certain way, but there's no way they can know if it worked. When you vote away from a polling place, it means anyone threatening/bribing/blackmailing/buying the vote can know for sure how you voted, because they can demand to see the vote before it is sealed.
This is a fundamental point about voter secrecy. If voter secrecy is not merely optional, but required and enforced, then that necessarily allows for voter coercion. Frankly, this alone should be enough to discourage ALL absentee voting except where required because the voter is incapable of voting in person.
Point #2: Easier to steal -- This assumes that the safety check of the outer envelope signature is ignored by the people processing the vote.
No, I am talking in that point about stealing the ballot itself, not actually using the ballot. I was unclear.
It also assumes that someone doesn't report that they haven't received their mail-ballot.
Yes, but for many elections, people might not notice until it is too late. And if stolen the OTHER way (en route to the elections office), then you can check up on it too, but most people do not.
If a neighborhood has problem with mail theft, then theft of ballots is small on the scale of the other items people steal.
Not to me. I can't think of anything else I get in the mail that is as important as my ballot (which I don't use, but that's irrelevant).
But that's beside the point: I am not saying there's not ways to deal with the problem, somewhat. I am saying these are security problems that exist in mail balloting, that do not exist in polling places, and that cannot be eliminated to the point of not being a factor. So sure, you can say there's ways to deal with it, and I'd agree, but none of those ways substantially eliminate the problem.
Point #3: Steal identity (signature) -- Your assumption is that ID is harder to forge.
Yes, it is. I can forge a signature without much work, and so could many people. Well enough to have a chance of passing the pollworkers, anyway. But I doubt many people could just as easily forge an ID. I know it's not hard, but it takes resources, materials, and expertise most of us do not have.
Further, it is not just about forging, but using. Fine, you forge an ID and vote. Assuming you show up in person with it and no one notices that you are not who you say you are (since most polling places are in local precincts where someone might recognize the name), now forge another one. You have to go to a different polling place, else you'll likely be caught, voting in the same place again. The risk goes up each time, and you can only do a few. If you're really good, maybe a couple dozen in the day, working really hard.
In mail voting, the risk goes up each time, but in much smaller increments, and you can do hundreds of them.
So EVEN IF it were easier -- or just as easy -- to forge an ID as a signature, you could not do it AS MUCH, or AS EASILY.
Read Bruce Schnier's
I know all about Bruce Schneier -- please don't pretend I am ignorant about the issues -- and I doubt he'd disagree with me here.
4. Double-voting: Far easier? If I can register multiple times with the county, then I could just as easily vote at multiple polling places in the county (or in different counties).
Yes, but that's hard to do, because you need to multiple proofs of residency.
One ballot per registered voter is sent to that voter.
Ideally, yes, but -- especially in King County -- people regularly end up being registered multiple times, even at the same address.
It is up to the counties to manage registration and cross-check with the statewide database. How is voting by mail make multiple registration any more susceptible than voting at multiple polling places?
I didn't say multiple REGISTRATION, but multiple VOTING. And isn't it obvious? If you are registered twice at the same location, you can vote twice by mail without raising any questions. But chances are good you'll get caught if you do that at the polling place. And even if it is multiple registrations at different locations, not only is it
As far as errors on ballots, the ballots used by Pierce county are the Optical Scan type, which have the highest accuracy of any voting system.
Well, no. It depends on how you measure accuracy. DRE machines have perfect accuracy if the voter checks their votes before submitting them. The same cannot be said for any paper system.
As far as ballots being lost in the mail, if you are concerned about this, then drop your ballot off at the Post Office or at one of the election drop-off boxes.
First, dropping off at the post office doesn't change the fact that it can get lost. It just takes some one of the places it can get lost. Instead of getting lost from the mailbox to the PO, now it can only get lost from the PO to the Auditor.
Second, this is not about Me. I always vote on the voting machines. I've never used an absentee ballot, even to "drop off," and unless I am incapable of going to the voting machines, I never WILL use the absentee ballots.
This isn't about Me. It's about the system. And the fact is, most people will just drop it in the mail.