The Voting Thread (Procedures, Turnout, Legal Challenges)(Update: Trump to file suit in PA, MI, WI, AZ, NV, GA) (12 Viewers)

[Lapaz]

There is a lot of push-back from Trump on voting by mail, but most states allow it, and 1/3 allow it without any excuse. His rationale is that it will lead to vast fraud, but of course that isn't his real reason. His real reason is that he thinks it will be worse for conservatives, but studies have shown that states that have instituted much broader voting by mail haven't had any statistical changes in party voting.

Stanford study: Mail voting doesn't benefit one party over another

Coronavirus-spurred limits have intensified a push to allow more mail balloting in November.

www.politico.com

Voting Outside the Polling Place: Absentee, All-Mail and other Voting at Home Options

Most states offer at least one method for any eligible voter to cast a ballot before Election Day. While some states provide early in-person voting, this webpage addresses absentee voting and all-mail voting.

www.ncsl.org

Although, normally voting by mail doesn't affect party votes, I bet it might this year if we have another resurgence of Covid, because I think the right is much more apt to discount the virus than the left. I know that is why Trump is against it.

Whether you're left or right wing, expanding mail in votes is the right thing to do to reduce the likelihood of spreading the virus, to expand voter participation, and to make it easier for those that do show up to stay distant. It will also allow any people with susceptibilities to remain safer. I think voting by mail could be made extremely secure by having people vote using traditional postal mail, coupled with requiring a confirmation either by phone, email or text. If done by phone, then voters can provide confirmation that can include confirming their form number. If done by email or text, it can include a picture of their form, and then confirmation that that was their form. Rather than staffers individually calling people, this can be automated by having voters call the number, text the number, or email the address provided to them on their form. A website can even be created with a database of those that have voted, and perhaps a link to allow people to confirm their vote was correctly registered. For people without computers, a site can include a means to access the database over the phone with some confirmation information. These types of systems are used extensively by banks and other sites that need security, so I think they are mature enough to use. We could even use such a site for people to confirm their vote on the day of the election.

 

[Tony1Sainstfan]

He's have the forge the signature well enough to pass, and the person who requested the ballot can look up online to see that it has been sent, and when you send it back.. when it is received and then counted. So, if I requested a ballot and it never came and I saw that it was "received" by them, I'd report it.

but that pretty much never happens. Never happened once to me.

Well thank God you’ve done it 115,000,000 times each voting cycle.

 

[wardorican]

Well thank God you’ve done it 115,000,000 times each voting cycle.

Pretty sure I said I voted in 3-4 elections by mail. Hyperbole doesn't make your argument any better.

I understand the idea of a mail in ballot might be foreign to you, since Mississippi only allows absentee voting. But, it's a pretty well proven system in many states.

 

[reubenray]

Instead of voting in person or vote by mail why can't they have drop off box locations. This could be at the same spot for the actual in person voting or a location that could handle a lot of traffic like a huge parking lot. They could set up enough boxes to keep the traffic moving. They could also set up locations for people walking that don't have cars.

I would not trust the USPS to not loose a bunch of ballots. If this happened it would not be due to politics, but due to handling a huge amount of additional mail.

 

[N.O.Bronco]

No it’s not on me. You say it’s completely secure so are you saying the USPS is completely secure? If you are 100% convinced fraud will not be a problem then what happens if Norma Jean your friendly mail handler puts your ballot in the other Bronco’s mailbox and he’s half blind with a slight case of dementia so he votes for you both? I’m in favor of limited absentee voting like we have now.

I’ve made my case, look at the level of fraud in Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and Hawaii. It’s all infinitesimally small. Yet they exclusively do mail ballots. Yet they maintain lower than the average in terms of fraud(which is already incredibly rare).

You are claiming there will suddenly be this outsized influx of fraud if other states follow suit, what evidence do you have of that?

Meanwhile, the real issue we are facing is a current system not able to deal with a pandemic during an election. Where polling stations are already facing a lack of capacity and volunteers. Which runs the real risk of actually delegitimizating The election if we end up with hundreds of thousands of people either too frightened to vote or unable to, despite desiring a way to voice their say on our democracy. So additionally, what is your solution to that, if not expanding absentee and mail in options?

 

[cuddlemonkey]

No it’s not on me. You say it’s completely secure so are you saying the USPS is completely secure? If you are 100% convinced fraud will not be a problem then what happens if Norma Jean your friendly mail handler puts your ballot in the other Bronco’s mailbox and he’s half blind with a slight case of dementia so he votes for you both? I’m in favor of limited absentee voting like we have now.

But it is on you. You claim that fraud can play a big role in voting by mail, but we have no evidence of this in places where voting by mail is widespread. When someone makes a claim on this board, it needs to be defended. What do you have that you can point to that makes you thing voter fraud is a legitimate concern, much more so than in person voting?

 

[cuddlemonkey]

Instead of voting in person or vote by mail why can't they have drop off box locations. This could be at the same spot for the actual in person voting or a location that could handle a lot of traffic like a huge parking lot. They could set up enough boxes to keep the traffic moving. They could also set up locations for people walking that don't have cars.

I would not trust the USPS to not loose a bunch of ballots. If this happened it would not be due to politics, but due to handling a huge amount of additional mail.

Colorado does, as far as I am aware. This is from the state's website regarding mail-in ballots: "Voters are encouraged to drop off ballots at designated drop off locations, drop-box locations, or mail their ballots in time to be received by the county clerk before the polls close."

 

[N.O.Bronco]

Instead of voting in person or vote by mail why can't they have drop off box locations. This could be at the same spot for the actual in person voting or a location that could handle a lot of traffic like a huge parking lot. They could set up enough boxes to keep the traffic moving. They could also set up locations for people walking that don't have cars.

I would not trust the USPS to not loose a bunch of ballots. If this happened it would not be due to politics, but due to handling a huge amount of additional mail.

This is exactly what states like Oregon do.

You get a ballot and a special return envelope and either you mail it back or drop it off at one of the multitude of drop boxes in the state. You can then track and ensure it was received and counted accurately.

 

[Incumbent]

Instead of voting in person or vote by mail why can't they have drop off box locations. This could be at the same spot for the actual in person voting or a location that could handle a lot of traffic like a huge parking lot. They could set up enough boxes to keep the traffic moving. They could also set up locations for people walking that don't have cars.

I would not trust the USPS to not loose a bunch of ballots. If this happened it would not be due to politics, but due to handling a huge amount of additional mail.

Living in a state where mail-in voting is limited by circumstances, I'm not firsthand familiar with how it works, and was wondering the same as you. It's nice to see confirmation from other people that's exactly how it works.

I do think the concerns about mail-in voting are way overblown and largely for political reasons. Given all of the really important business we are able to conduct by mail and online, any hurdles to voting remotely are ones that should be easily accounted for and addressed.

It's also the case that the experience of in-person election day voting can vary greatly depending on where a person lives. When I voted in small town Louisiana, I might have occasionally had to wait 5-10 minutes to vote, but often could walk right up, get checked in, and go straight to a machine. Voting in a large metro area, I've experienced waits of up to an hour. It is much worse than that in many other locations. That difference in perspective, alone, can have a defining influence on how people view the election process and whether or not they think it needs to be improved. Knowing that the disparity in those experiences can also reflect local partisan majorities can determine whether people even want the process to be improved.

Voting should be secure but it should also be easily accessible and efficient. People shouldn't have to stand in long lines and wait up to several hours, on a weekday, to participate in the election process. If nothing else, echoing what somebody else said, voting should be essentially as easy or as difficult for everybody.

 

[wardorican]

Instead of voting in person or vote by mail why can't they have drop off box locations. This could be at the same spot for the actual in person voting or a location that could handle a lot of traffic like a huge parking lot. They could set up enough boxes to keep the traffic moving. They could also set up locations for people walking that don't have cars.

I would not trust the USPS to not loose a bunch of ballots. If this happened it would not be due to politics, but due to handling a huge amount of additional mail.

You'd have to set it up like Mail in ballots where the registered voter requests it, and has to properly sign the back of the sealed envelope. They check those signatures, and often, people forget to sign them, and their ballots aren't counted. In those cases, they contact the person, as best they can, to get it fixed.

Otherwise, the issue is that you'd want to ensure you're identifying every voter, like they usually do in person. Most use an ID, but not everyone has to.

 

[Lapaz]

This is exactly what states like Oregon do.

You get a ballot and a special return envelope and either you mail it back or drop it off at one of the multitude of drop boxes in the state. You can then track and ensure it was received and counted accurately.

The way you've described what Oregon is doing, they do have a secondary means of confirming votes, but it appears to rely on voters. That might be adequate, if they have a reporting system that would alert them of a problem, and then if the state can perform secondary checks without relying on the voters. If so, then I would hope other states would emulate that. The alternate secondary check that would not rely on voters should allow the state to sample some voters for secondary confirmation, and only expand the secondary check if some fraud is discovered.

Maybe the reason we haven't seen much mail-in fraud is due to the places that are using it. Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, and Colorado are firmly blue states, so it would take vast fraud to swing an election in those states. It would be too easy to catch that, so it is effectively a hardened location. The same applies to Alabama, Mississippi, Kansas, etc, that are firmly red states, and likewise hardened. On the other hand, purple states like Florida, Ohio, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are much more appealing targets. You can swing the national and statewide elections with a small, and less detectable, attack on their elections. I want them to increase their security, not create any new vulnerabilities. I know it is a political issue, so the question is will we be worse off accepting some new vulnerabilities created by hastily adding mail-in ballots, or worse off accepting a skewed election due to suppressed voting due to fears of the pandemic? I lean in favor of taking the risk of mail-in, since it will prevent a virus resurgence that doesn't care about politics, but my hope is that at least the purple states will work hard to expand mail-in voting with protections.

Our adversaries will look for vulnerabilities to attack, so we shouldn't be complacent, just because we haven't had a lot of it in the past. We never saw anything like we saw in 2016, and I suspect we don't really know how effective they were in changing any votes. Whether or not they were successful, I'm sure they learned, and will keep poking around, so we have to harden our systems.

I'm not familiar with Oregon's approach, and it may be adequate, particularly if they have a secondary means to randomly confirm votes, and a means to expand the checks if something suspicious is spotted. In person voting in my state already has a secondary check in many states, since you have to show your ID to compare to registered voter lists. I want something similar for mail-in voting. Mail-in voting can be a wonderful thing, particularly for people that can not afford to wait over an hour in line or even get to the voting place, but I see the logic, even if their motives are politically motivated, in increasing mail in security.

 

[Heathen]

Allowing everyone in America the option of mail-in voting is the only right answer, and should be a lasting answer after a pandemic that has the potential to kill several more hundred thousand by November, if not up to a million.

Think about that for a minute. There are actually folks out there that want to mandate voting in person during a PANDEMIC.

You would think Republicans in Congress would be for expanding the right to vote. The fraud argument is age old and still doesn't hold enough water to be relevant. What is concerning and continues to be a problem to this day is voter suppression.

I mean, we all realize that the Trump administration is trying to gut the USPS, so it isn't surprising they'd be against allowing vote by mail. But even going with an undemocratic agenda, studies have shown there isn't much to worry about -- that vote by mail largely doesn't seem to help one party much more than another:

The Neutral Partisan Effects of Vote-by-Mail: Evidence from County-Level Roll-Outs | SIEPR

In response to COVID-19, many scholars and policymakers are urging the U.S. to implement a nationwide system of voting-by-mail to safeguard the electoral process. What are the effects of vote-by-mail programs? In this paper, we provide a comprehensive design-based analysis of the effect of...

siepr.stanford.edu

 

[The moose]

No problems with voting by mail. I don't buy the potential problems can't be worked out exceptionally easy.

Actually if the game plan ever was actually getting all people to vote it would be a national holiday.

The thing about it all is we get pushed back on all easier methods big voting must mean somebody doesn't want people to vote.

I know that law Florida passed to keep ex prisoners from voting unless they had all the fines paid got shot down. Florida is gonna have many thousands of new voters in this election.

 

[insidejob]

This isn't just about voting by mail, but I know that a lot of people in Florida do vote by mail.

Their big voter fraud investigation turned up zero cases of fraud.

A Trump election conspiracy collapses

Florida finds no fraud in 2018 vote as president rails against mail-in ballots.

www.politico.com

 

[NoPartyMike]

We should go further and open up online voting. Then we can see where America really stands on issues. I see no reason why online voting shouldn't be available. Am I missing something? We can bank online, have doctor's visits and receive health information, file our taxes, conduct the census, and handle our DMV work all online. Time to enter the 21st Century.

 

[The moose]

This isn't just about voting by mail, but I know that a lot of people in Florida do vote by mail.

Their big voter fraud investigation turned up zero cases of fraud.

A Trump election conspiracy collapses

Florida finds no fraud in 2018 vote as president rails against mail-in ballots.

www.politico.com

the states with elderly population like Florida should make it easy to vote.

They should not make older people with bad joints have to stand in crazy lines.

This is all just common sense it shouldn't be this hard.

 

[JRad]

We should go further and open up online voting. Then we can see where America really stands on issues. I see no reason why online voting shouldn't be available. Am I missing something? We can bank online, have doctor's visits and receive health information, file our taxes, conduct the census, and handle our DMV work all online. Time to enter the 21st Century.

Cybersecurity exports are almost unilaterally against this. The internet is not a secure place.

 

[coldseat]

Mail in ballots are nice and that should be expanded, but I think we should all be able to vote online securely. I mean, If I can access my bank account information 24/7 online or through an app security or submit my taxes electronically without great fear of fraud, we should be able to do the same for voting. The technology is available, there's just a lack of will. No reason not too.

 

[insidejob]

Voter fraud found! Committed in 2012 by someone who later worked on Trump's campaign.

Trump staffer convicted for electoral fraud

Brandon Hall faces five years in prison for the crime

www.independent.co.uk

“The fact that the Trump campaign and the Michigan Republican Party embraced Brandon Hall is just one more reason to recount and audit the vote in Michigan.”