Mail-in Voting Delivers Distrust in Our Elections

 

The Trump campaign post-election efforts to detect fraud and possibly reverse the election results were doomed to failure. In retrospect, their only hope was to block mail-in voting before it spread.

Democrats learned in 2018 how to use mail-in voting to their advantage. They were dead set on a repeat performance.

The bipartisan Carter-Baker commission had warned back in 2005 that “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” Public health officials and election experts broadly agreed that Covid was not a barrier to conducting safe in-person elections. But it didn’t matter.

There were no arguments that could prevail against the relentless movement to establish mail-in elections. The proponents knew exactly what they were doing and why.

Mail-in ballots, sent to voters with no legitimate obstacle to voting in person, have become a far more serious threat to election integrity than the absentee ballots which concerned Carter-Baker. So it was no surprise when election results shifted dramatically during ballot counting as the mail-in votes came in.

Here’s the take-home from 2020: it is humanly impossible to conduct a secure election with mail-in ballots.

The obvious key to obtaining an honest vote count is ballot security. Time-tested protocols for normal in-person voting established a chain of evidence. At no time is an official ballot, once printed, out of the control of an accountable authority until the vote is counted. Each voter is verified at the polls and each ballot is cast in secret without interference.

All the safety checks go out the window with mail-in voting. By traditional standards, every mailed ballot is a security breach. It is unknown and unknowable what happens to that ballot once it is mailed.

Elections officials in Arizona and elsewhere crowed about what a great job they had done and how little or no fraud was committed. But they missed the point. Mail-in fraud is invisible to them unless they’re willing to dig for it, which they’re not.

The Trump team and others readily found evidence of fraud, petty, and systemic, everywhere. With the new methodology in place, there were multiple cases of ridiculously high registration counts and turnout rates. Voters cast multiple ballots, dead people, felons, and non-citizens voted, there were computer “glitches” with runs of votes almost all for the same candidate and bags of uncounted ballots. Fraud was seeping out of every pore.

We know that mail-in voting enabled family members to “help“ grandma, ballots that were bought or exchanged for gifts, ballots mailed incorrectly that were voted anyway, and all the other irregularities unique to mail-in voting.

Signature verification is the go-to safeguard for fraudulent submissions but it is a porous sieve. Even conscientious poll workers have difficulty reliably matching signatures which can change in appearance. There were numerous instances of improper verification procedures.

One investigator reportedly signed and mailed in nine falsely signed ballots, eight of which were accepted. Moreover, signature verifications cannot be reviewed once the secret ballot is removed from the envelope.

The almost insurmountable challenge in mitigating mail-in fraud is that it is not only difficult to detect, but it occurs mostly in multiple small incidents. To obtain relief, each of them must be separately identified, investigated, and prosecuted in a short time window.

Campaigning is hard and expensive. Stealing mail-in votes is far easier. We may never know for sure how much fraud there was in this election or whether it was enough to change the outcome.

But we do know that somewhere between 70% to 80% of Americans believe there was substantial corruption, an alarming level of distrust in a democracy. Voting is the lifeblood of government by the consent of the governed. Mail-in voting injects a toxic level of uncertainty into the process.

If fraud, corruption, and widespread cynicism become the new normal, America will be permanently destabilized. The days of working together for the common good and peaceful transitions of power will be over.

Mail-in fraud is inevitable, undetectable, and irreversible. We will never have transparent, honest elections Americans can believe in until we restore ballot security.

Published in Elections
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There are 13 comments.

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  1. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    They got them on film stuffing ballot boxes in Georgia.  

    • #1
  2. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Tom Patterson: All the safety checks go out the window with mail-in voting. By traditional standards, every mailed ballot is a security breach. It is unknown and unknowable what happens to that ballot once it is mailed.

    Thank you.

    We need to go back to in-person registration at least two weeks before the election day and then in-person voting, with the voter putting his or her ballot into the old-fashioned vote recording and counting machine that is not connected to the Internet.

    • #2
  3. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Tom Patterson: Elections officials in Arizona and elsewhere crowed about what a great job they had done and how little or no fraud was committed. But they missed the point. Mail-in fraud is invisible to them unless they’re willing to dig for it, which they’re not.

    That’s actually true for the regular process of registration and voting too.  Every election, a number of voter registration confirmations – including/especially those for same-day – are returned as “undeliverable.”  “Addressee Unknown,” “No Such Address,” etc.

    But those are “invisible” because they are ignored.  And then we’re told “no evidence found.”  Only because they just round-file it.

    • #3
  4. A-Squared Inactive
    A-Squared
    @ASquared

    I said on FB today that “Mail-in voting is ripe for voter-intimidation and voter fraud, and any voting system that wants to be secure should never allow mail in ballots.”

    I got called an EverTrumper for saying that.

    • #4
  5. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    Via Laura Ingraham.

    • #5
  6. MiMac Thatcher
    MiMac
    @MiMac

    While the case for election altering voter fraud has not YET been proven, the fact that in 4 of the last 6 presidential elections the loser claimed he was defrauded points to a serious problem in our electoral system. In 2000, Al Gore claimed he was cheated by the Supreme Court. In 2004, many Democrats claimed that vote fraud in Ohio altered the outcome-claims that the Ohio Secretary of State (a Republican) interfered ( in fact Daschle and other major Democrat figures claimed GWB was an illegitimate president). In 2016, Hillary claimed that Russian interference altered the outcome. In 2020, Trump has claimed the election was stolen. Whatever  your party affiliation, it is clear we have a problem and need to work to enhance election integrity.

    • #6
  7. Taras Coolidge
    Taras
    @Taras

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    They got them on film stuffing ballot boxes in Georgia.

    Whoever filmed them is probably in a lot of trouble!

     

    • #7
  8. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Taras (View Comment):

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    They got them on film stuffing ballot boxes in Georgia.

    Whoever filmed them is probably in a lot of trouble!

     

    Security cameras designed to clear up “slip and fall” legal claims probably are fearless.

    • #8
  9. DonG (Biden is compromised) Coolidge
    DonG (Biden is compromised)
    @DonG

    I am OK with vote by mail, but I want each ballot to have DNA and fingerprint identification.  Sorry, about the loss of anonymity, but it is the price to pay.  We trust the IRS and can set up similar laws about election workers getting 5 years in jail for releasing individual’s votes.  Yes, there will be national database of fingerprints and DNA for people voting by mail.  All ballots must be requested for each election.   If the system is not fraud-proof, then it is assumed to be fraud-filled.

    • #9
  10. A-Squared Inactive
    A-Squared
    @ASquared

    DonG (Biden is compromised) (View Comment):
    I am OK with vote by mail, but I want each ballot to have DNA and fingerprint identification. Sorry, about the loss of anonymity, but it is the price to pay.

    I’ve considered this.  I can’t say I’m all for it, but it is the only way we could ever truly audit an election outcome.

    • #10
  11. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    A-Squared (View Comment):

    DonG (Biden is compromised) (View Comment):
    I am OK with vote by mail, but I want each ballot to have DNA and fingerprint identification. Sorry, about the loss of anonymity, but it is the price to pay.

    I’ve considered this. I can’t say I’m all for it, but it is the only way we could ever truly audit an election outcome.

    And then all you have to do is make sure people don’t vote both absentee and in person, perhaps at a different location.

    What do you do if someone gets an absentee ballot, and then shows up to vote in person, maybe saying they never received the absentee ballot, or they didn’t have time to return it in time, or if it was returned in time it wasn’t really THEM…

    • #11
  12. A-Squared Inactive
    A-Squared
    @ASquared

    kedavis (View Comment):

    A-Squared (View Comment):

    DonG (Biden is compromised) (View Comment):
    I am OK with vote by mail, but I want each ballot to have DNA and fingerprint identification. Sorry, about the loss of anonymity, but it is the price to pay.

    I’ve considered this. I can’t say I’m all for it, but it is the only way we could ever truly audit an election outcome.

    And then all you have to do is make sure people don’t vote both absentee and in person, perhaps at a different location.

    What do you do if someone gets an absentee ballot, and then shows up to vote in person, maybe saying they never received the absentee ballot, or they didn’t have time to return it in time, or if it was returned in time it wasn’t really THEM…

    Even with only in-person voting and strict voter ID, there is no way to audit the results because we can never tie a ballot back an individual voter and then confirm that the ballot tied to them corresponds with how they voted.  

    Again, I’m probably not for it because I don’t trust the government with the knowledge of how people voted, but I also don’t trust the current voting system (mostly because I lived around Chicago for 18 years and voted in a system that was designed to maximize opportunities for voting fraud.)

    • #12
  13. Taras Coolidge
    Taras
    @Taras

    iWe (View Comment):

    Taras (View Comment):

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    They got them on film stuffing ballot boxes in Georgia.

    Whoever filmed them is probably in a lot of trouble!

     

    Security cameras designed to clear up “slip and fall” legal claims probably are fearless.

    … But the security cameras probably didn’t notify the Republicans or the media themselves …

    • #13
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