By that logic we have to get rid of mail-in voting as well because there could always be a sledgehammer guy standing next to someone in their own home.
> "Postal voting on demand, however many safeguards you build into it, is wide open to fraud… on a scale that will make election rigging a possibility and indeed in some areas a probability."
> "Now I know that there is a very strong political desire to keep the present system. What I'm saying is that if you keep the present system, then however many safeguards you create, fraud and serious fraud is inevitably going to continue because that is built into the system."
In reality sledgehammer guy is never the threat, it's somebody fabricating votes. This can be done in a completely illegal fashion as in complete identity fraud, legally grey areas like ballot harvesting, or more socially palatable forms of identity fraud like somebody voting on behalf of family members who would not otherwise be voting.
And the biggest problem of this all is that it's basically impossible to prove because there's no meaningful identifier at any given point in the process. The only real evidence you'd have is a bad signature, yet in 2020 some states ceased comparing signatures and signature comparison was, in general, bizarrely under attack by certain interest groups.
This is 100%, completely absolutely untrue. Stop repeating this propaganda. The system is actually really well designed and safe, I was a poll observer.
You cannot "fabricate" votes, because all mail-in ballots are associated with a voter. Or rather, you put your ballot in an envelope and the envelope is associated with you. When your ballot is received, you are marked as voted and other ballots are invalid. The envelope is stored as proof of who voted and the ballot is kept separately to be tallied.
Ballot counting is done in public (you can go watch!) and there are a lot of safeguards and crosschecks. It's intended to make any fraud very obvious and incredibly difficult to scale.
Some do think so, but there is also a material difference in needing to be intimidated at the time of the vote being cast vs any point in the future as well.
I think the bigger concern is that mail in ballots lead to fake ballots being submitted. Though I've seen no convincing evidence of this happening at any meaningful scale and the arguments seem unconvincing since you don't get a ballot unless verified with a state ID and your ballot has a unique ID associated with your name, preventing a double spend.
Personally, my concern is that with mail in ballots some nutjob that believes there's ballot stuffing can set fire to the ballotbox and even though they're caught it's a major inconvenience to get a replacement ballot and the websites that show your ballot is received take days to update.
But I still love mail in voting. My state sends a candidate brochure with it and I can take my time to actually look up all those random candidates' policies. It takes me hours to actually fill out my ballot but that's a feature, not a bug (there's nothing preventing you from along party lines but frankly I'd be happier without parties)
For me the problem with mail-in votes is that they are (in many jurisdictions) allowed to come in long after the in-person voting is closed, and the preliminary results are annouced. So it creates the space for manipulations, where you count the in-person votes first, and, if the score is close, then a week after the election day half a million of mail-in votes mysteriously comes in and swings the vote one way or another.
By that logic we should require DNA testing because, you never know, someone might go to a polling place and lie about their name and have a fake ID too.
You never can be too careful!
Also, maybe someone inside will take their ballot from them.
IMHO this voting thing is too risky. We should just go back to having a ruling family /s
endgame|1 month ago
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-26487418
The article quotes one Mr Richard Mawrey QC:
> "Postal voting on demand, however many safeguards you build into it, is wide open to fraud… on a scale that will make election rigging a possibility and indeed in some areas a probability."
> "Now I know that there is a very strong political desire to keep the present system. What I'm saying is that if you keep the present system, then however many safeguards you create, fraud and serious fraud is inevitably going to continue because that is built into the system."
somenameforme|1 month ago
And the biggest problem of this all is that it's basically impossible to prove because there's no meaningful identifier at any given point in the process. The only real evidence you'd have is a bad signature, yet in 2020 some states ceased comparing signatures and signature comparison was, in general, bizarrely under attack by certain interest groups.
habinero|1 month ago
You cannot "fabricate" votes, because all mail-in ballots are associated with a voter. Or rather, you put your ballot in an envelope and the envelope is associated with you. When your ballot is received, you are marked as voted and other ballots are invalid. The envelope is stored as proof of who voted and the ballot is kept separately to be tallied.
Ballot counting is done in public (you can go watch!) and there are a lot of safeguards and crosschecks. It's intended to make any fraud very obvious and incredibly difficult to scale.
zamadatix|1 month ago
godelski|1 month ago
Personally, my concern is that with mail in ballots some nutjob that believes there's ballot stuffing can set fire to the ballotbox and even though they're caught it's a major inconvenience to get a replacement ballot and the websites that show your ballot is received take days to update.
But I still love mail in voting. My state sends a candidate brochure with it and I can take my time to actually look up all those random candidates' policies. It takes me hours to actually fill out my ballot but that's a feature, not a bug (there's nothing preventing you from along party lines but frankly I'd be happier without parties)
Detrytus|1 month ago
matsemann|1 month ago
dietr1ch|1 month ago
WWLink|1 month ago
You never can be too careful!
Also, maybe someone inside will take their ballot from them.
IMHO this voting thing is too risky. We should just go back to having a ruling family /s