Sign up to vote by mail
- Thread starter FreeportPanther
- Start date
There’s a chance this could be the way we have to vote. Also, if the correct system is used to handle the ballots, this would be a pretty secure process.
It will be interesting to see what that secure system might be, because as it stands today vote by mail is a pretty easy system to scam. Maybe not on a large scale level, but on a small one.
I was in Oregon where it’s all vote by mail right before the 2016 Election and it’s a system every state should be doing. You can either drop it in the mail or drop it off at locations all over the state, way better than touchscreens with no paper trail and waiting in lines.
I was guilty a few times in the last week myself so don’t wanna throw stones. But maybe give it a rest please?
Oregon has been voting by mail since 1998 and Washington since 2011, can you give us an example where there was a scam or shenanigan’s in those states.
So you don't think that there have been any instances of someone talking grandma's ballot and filling it out and mailing it in? Seriously?
I mean it's not Oregon or Washington, but if you pay attention to politics surely you remember this, seeing as to how it was just a year ago.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/po...ballot-fraud-indicted-multiple-counts-n976991
"Ballots were collected from voters and taken into possession unlawfully; witness certifications were signed indicating the signor had witnessed the voter vote the absentee ballot when he or she had not, and the ballots were mailed in such a manner to conceal the fact that the voter had not personally mailed it himself,"
It was bad enough that they had to run a new election.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/po...ballot-fraud-indicted-multiple-counts-n976991
"Ballots were collected from voters and taken into possession unlawfully; witness certifications were signed indicating the signor had witnessed the voter vote the absentee ballot when he or she had not, and the ballots were mailed in such a manner to conceal the fact that the voter had not personally mailed it himself,"
It was bad enough that they had to run a new election.
A 2005 report the Commission on Federal Election Reform concluded, “Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
According to the 2012 Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project report:
Having tens of millions of ballots being transmitted and marked without strict chain-of-custody procedures creates risks that simply do not exist with any form of in-person voting, whether on Election Day or in early-voting settings.
"The consensus, among people who study fraud carefully, is that voting by mail is a much more fertile area for fraud than voting in person," said Charles Stewart, who studies election technology and administration at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
According to the 2012 Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project report:
Having tens of millions of ballots being transmitted and marked without strict chain-of-custody procedures creates risks that simply do not exist with any form of in-person voting, whether on Election Day or in early-voting settings.
"The consensus, among people who study fraud carefully, is that voting by mail is a much more fertile area for fraud than voting in person," said Charles Stewart, who studies election technology and administration at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Why should people have to think things through? It is much easier just to type the first thing that comes to your head and imagine it’s really intelligent.
Are there isolated instances of voter fraud in the US? Certainly there are - every year, something like 100 million votes are cast across the country and there are bound to be some that have not followed the letter of the law. The question is, do these votes effect the outcome of any races, and the evidence for that is very sparse. The North Carolina case you cited is the only 1 that comes to mind that actually effected a race. Four states now conduct their elections entirely by mail ballot, and so far there are no reported problems with them.
Mail ballots along with early voting are attempts to remove barriers that make it difficult for some people to vote. Increasing participation in the democratic process seems like a goal worth achieving. Our entire history of elections, going back to the ratification of the Constitution, is in the direction of expanding the electorate and increasing representation.
No, it the only one THAT YOU KNOW OF where it affected the race. The fact of the matter is that it's not like anyone is checking for this sort of thing on a regular basis. So if it did happen how would anyone know? I mean the people in Washington have been quoted as saying that since the envelope to send the ballot back is postage prepaid that there is no reason that anyone would ever allow someone else to have or mail their ballot, so there is no chance that they could have any fraud there. Which is so stupid that assuming they actually believe that it's kind of mind boggling.
The more that vote by mail the shorter the lines and the less pressure and exposure to poll workers and voters.
No Brainer! Vote by mail!!!
No Brainer! Vote by mail!!!
Ballots get a unique three-way identifier. Has to match up when it’s returned with what was sent and the signature on file (you sign them). Can all be done electronically. Can’t stop someone from voting for Granny but it’s actually pretty robust.
Yes, in fact amendments to the Constitution have given women and racial minorities the right to vote. I was using the Constitution as a point of reference, when our system of government was instituted.
I get what you were saying, but the original Constitution was quite limited with regard to voting. In fact, voting was designed to limited true democracy. You can’t have a system based on majority rule for very long. Standards change very quickly and you end up like France with new Constitutions often. So no, the US Constitution is not about expanding voting.
Your feelings or suspicions aren’t proof of wrongdoing. Until you can show actual proof of it, it’s just repeating the debunked conspiracy theories you guys always use to limit voting rights. Cause you know the best way for you to win elections is to have fewer, whiter people vote.
I agree with your comments about the original Constitution - I was merely using it as the starting point for my statement that we have been expanding the electorate since the beginning. And part of that expansion has come through amending the original.
It's as if you completely missed the story I linked to from just one year ago about how the mailed in ballots from an election were so compromised that they ended up having to rerun the election.
It wasn’t mailed in ballots. It was a Republican official in North Carolina sending people to voters homes, getting them to sign blank ballots, and then having him fill them in and drop them off (to save postage). It actually wasn’t that many people, but the election was so close, the judge ordered a new election.
It really was the only egregious documented case of voter fraud in the entire 2018 election. Remember that Trump appointed a commission to investigate what he called “rampant” election fraud in states he lost in 2016, and the commission disbanded without finding any election fraud.
His claim that he list New Hampshire because voters were bused in from Massachusetts to illegally vote there was nonsense: The Democratic Party legally provides buses for students at Massachusetts colleges who were New Hampshire residents to go back there to vote, but the total number of students was less than 10% of the margin by which Clinton won the state.
His claim that he would have won California except for “millions” of illegals who allegedly all voted 2 or 3 times for Clinton was delusional. He lost California by more than 2 million votes. There was zero evidence of any illegals voting. Remember there are Republican poll watchers at every polling place. The Republican members of the state committee which regulates voting signed a letter saying that his claim was a total fabrication.
There certainly are isolated instances of voter fraud in mailed votes, but it is a small cost to pay for the much higher voter turnout.
If you want to talk about real voter fraud, you need to talk about deliberate Republican vote suppression: Closing polling places in heavily minority areas like they did in Michigan in 2016 and in Texas two weeks ago. Closing hundreds of polling places in Ohio, which they have done in 2020 — almost all of which are in minority areas. Closing voter registration offices in cities where you now can register only at an office in a suburb which is not served by public transit. Removing almost 500,000 registered voters from the voting rolls in Georgia so those people have to register again to be able to vote, but not notifying them they have been removed.
That is real election fraud, not a few people filling out their grandmother’s ballot. And, it is not isolated. It is a major part of Republican strategy.
So it's your contention that ballots sent to people's homes that can either be mailed in or dropped off in drop boxes are not mailed in ballots? That's the ridiculousness that you are trying to convince people of to dismiss the fact that pretty much every election expert in the country would tell you that mail in ballots are much more likely to be the subject of fraud than in person votes?
By the way, speaking of illegals voting, do you know that Pennsylvania admitted that they accidentally allowed over 3,000 illegals to register to vote? And do you further know that even though Pennsylvania tracks every single person who votes in every election that the state of Pennsylvania's position on the matter is that it doesn't really know if any of them actually cast a ballot in any election? But don't worry, they don't "think" that any of them did.
You never find something that you don't look for.
