We’re less worried about a low-scale low impact fraud my many people that is unlikely to alter results, than a systematic mass fraud by few people who can choose a result
That's the wrong perspective. The minute votes go into the mail system there is no way to know just how many mail-in votes might be subject to fraud. In other words, your characterization has no basis in evidence. Note that I am not asserting that massive fraud has been committed anywhere. That statement would be as impossible to support with evidence as yours.
The only thing you can state with absolute certainty is that mail-in ballots can be subject to manipulation and that this manipulation can reach enough scale to affect results in elections where the margin is so narrow that a few hundred or a few thousand votes can determine who wins.
Simple example: We receive eight ballots. There's absolutely nothing to prevent me from filling out all eight of them as I see fit and mailing them. Nothing.
There's also nothing to prevent bad actors from destroying ballots in large quantities.
Again, do not mischaracterize my statements here. I am not asserting that any of this has happened. I am saying that mail-in ballots enable potentially serious manipulation and are insecure.
This is like saying that short passwords are insecure. Lots of people use them safely and never get hacked. We all know they are unsafe. The fact that they might not be insecure enough for the general public to understand the issue (because you don't have news every day showing how many thousands of people are getting hurt) is immaterial. The truth of the matter is independent of the perceived consequences. Short passwords are insecure. Mail-in ballots are insecure.
> There's also nothing to prevent bad actors from destroying ballots in large quantities.
Around here (WA state), you can check to see if your ballot was received and accepted. If a bad actor destroys ballots in large quantities on their way to voters, many voters will notice and complain. If a bad actor destroys ballots in large quantities on their way to to the counting facility, some voters are likely to notice and complain.
Same goes if you return ballots for other people. Either the actual voter notices their ballot is missing or the vote counters notice they got two ballots from the same voter or a larger than usual number of bad signatures.
Is it foolproof? No. And there's usually no established procedure to cure a tampered election, either. But large scale tampering is likely to leave signs. And small scale tampering would only rarely make a difference in results.
In person voting might be more secure, but it takes a lot more people, and if you want an ID requirement, you need to figure out how to make ID acheivable for all the voters or it's really just a tool to disenfranchise people who have trouble getting ID. In the US, there is no blanket ID requirement, so there are a lot of eligible voters without ID.
No one has trouble getting an ID. You need an ID to drive, to work, to open a bank account, to buy liquor or tobacco, etc. The idea that someone can’t get an ID is absolute nonsense.
Not a problem. We should pay for them to get proper identification. This is likely an infinitesimally small percentage of the population qualified to vote. As the other commenter said, you need identification for most important things in life. Yet, again, if someone does not have ID and they want to vote, it should be easy and free. If they can't drive, we pay for an Uber. If they don't understand the process, we pay for a coach. Etc. This is the kind of process that reduces to zero over time. If you process 100K people on year one, there might only be a couple of thousand people the following year...and down to zero it goes.
Voting is much more fundamental to a democracy than Uber lmao, therefore it's worth it to make the effort to make sure as many people as possible can participate.
We have essentially ~no voter fraud in the US, so the only reason to change it is because you want to prevent other people from voting for selfish reasons.
> There's absolutely nothing to prevent me from filling out all eight of them as I see fit and mailing them. Nothing.
Just as there is nothing to prevent a person threatening or physically coercing 8 members of their household to vote as they direct.
This is hard to scale up into the hundreds.
WRT mail-in ballots, these are common place in Australia.
You post in a provided envelope to the AEC address, that outer envelope indentifies you against the voter rolls, just as you are identified when you attend a physical voting location.
The inner sealed envelope contains your voing slip - this is removed and passed on to the "votes from district" counting bucket .. just as all the voting slips from physical voting locations are.
In the checksumming of the election the same person being marked down as having voted multiple times, whether at various locations or by multiple mail in ballots, gets caught and investigated.
At this point voters are marked off against registration rolls and actual votes are anonymous.
This is important in an Australian election as no one should know that someone drew a crude suggestive image of their local member and submitted that.
The real downside of mail in voting is missing out on a sausage sizzle with others in your district at a voting location on voting day.
You arguing with the wrong person. I am saying that we need to go to in-person paper ballots.
The comment you responded to was about the scenario of someone getting a bunch of ballots and filling them out at home or making their household fill them out at home the way he or she might want to.
My point wasn't to paint a water-proof scenario. It is to illustrate just how unreliable and dangerous mail-in voting can be. There are other vectors for manipulation.
Not seeing the ballots won’t necessarily stop them from trying to vote. They might ring up to complain that they never got them. They may try and go in vote in person. Trying to vote using someone else’s name or ballot can very easily land you in hot water.
Plenty of home runs all
electric heating systems. Running inference on a H100 could be dual-purpose and also heat your home! (albeit less efficient than heat pumps, but identically as efficient as resistive heating)
The 8-10kW isn’t a big deal anymore given the prevalence of electric vehicles and charging them at home. A decade ago very few homes have this kind of hookup. Now it’s reasonably common, and if not, electricians wouldn’t bat an eye on installing it.
yes. you get it. They want a national id system that is weak enough that they can arbitrarily deny or revoke based on appearance or demeanor.
Most US citizens couldn't prove they are citizens, at least without a fingers-crossed records search IF they can remember the county they were born in. Stats say only around 10% of americans could easily put their hands on their birth certificate. Almost no one can produce one at a checkpoint if demanded, and its rare for people to even have one in their possession at home.
A passport proves citizenship, but its absence doesn't disprove it.
Voting cards and social security cards aren't identification. State issued cards like drivers licenses, state ID cards or even realID cards do not prove federal citizenship (although they do prove identity).
I think you misread your cited article. It does not say only around 10% could easily out their hands on a birth certificate. It says “9% don’t have proof of citizenship readily available” while traveling. It properly indicates nearly every US citizen has their birth certificate.
Of course you are right, basically no one carries their birth certificate around. Which is probably countered by the fact that birth certificates are pretty easily falsifiable because there is no standardization of them.
> It properly indicates nearly every US citizen has their birth certificate.
"Nearly every" is a bit of a stretch, given that black americans were still denied access to hospitals during childbirth in some states/counties as recently as the 1960s (or later). Children born via midwives often never ultimately get a birth certificate.
I think categorizing around 90% (from the cited link) as “nearly every” is accurate.
The sixties were over 50 years ago, I know as I am a child of the sixties :-)
Given how necessary driving is to living in nearly all of America, and that a with certificate is the primary point of ID to get one, there is a very strong motivation to get a birth certificate.
The heuristic is that DoD doesn’t do counterterrorism. I don’t expect DoD to prevent terror attacks just like I don’t expect the FBI to blow up bunkers in Iran. We don’t need numbers to be able to confidently estimate that the number of Iranian bunkers blown up by the FBI is approximately zero.
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