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- Feb 19, 2002
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I wonder if anyone who is in favor of "vote by mail" as a general policy understands that when you vote by mail, your vote choices are not private. In order to create a vote by mail system that is even remotely secure, each individual ballot needs a unique identifier and that unique identifier must be tied to the person who it is sent to. Then, somehow, the return ballot has to match YOUR signature because if someone questions results, there has to be a way to verify the submission. At a minimum, the scan of the return ballot needs to ensure that only one copy of ballot 123 is ever accepted even if it doesn't attempt to validate your signature.
The vote in person method allows the PTB to identify WHO voted because most municipalities match your ID to your address and cross off your name when they give you a ballot. The do not track who got what ballot and I'm not sure that the ballots have unique identifiers. If they don't they should because otherwise, someone can just copy a ballot and somehow "find" boxes of uncounted ballots. These always seem to go in favor of the Dems but I wouldn't want to say that they're more inclined to cheat.
My understanding is that absentee ballots are not even counted unless the number of returned ballots exceeds the difference in the counts for the leading candidates. This is how the bogus votes get in. If YOUR candidate is in danger of losing, you just "find" a box of absentee ballots. But with general vote-by-mail, all ballots must be opened and scanned and I'm not sure how many people that would take but probably way more than currently staff the polls. There is also no way to control what ballots were received vs what ballots were sent unless the USPS also gets involved and the uniqueID is also on the envelope so the USPS can count what it processed and make sure that the polling site gets the same results.
We could have a technical discussion on what it would take to create a secure vote-by-mail system that somehow protects the voter's privacy.
The vote in person method allows the PTB to identify WHO voted because most municipalities match your ID to your address and cross off your name when they give you a ballot. The do not track who got what ballot and I'm not sure that the ballots have unique identifiers. If they don't they should because otherwise, someone can just copy a ballot and somehow "find" boxes of uncounted ballots. These always seem to go in favor of the Dems but I wouldn't want to say that they're more inclined to cheat.
My understanding is that absentee ballots are not even counted unless the number of returned ballots exceeds the difference in the counts for the leading candidates. This is how the bogus votes get in. If YOUR candidate is in danger of losing, you just "find" a box of absentee ballots. But with general vote-by-mail, all ballots must be opened and scanned and I'm not sure how many people that would take but probably way more than currently staff the polls. There is also no way to control what ballots were received vs what ballots were sent unless the USPS also gets involved and the uniqueID is also on the envelope so the USPS can count what it processed and make sure that the polling site gets the same results.
We could have a technical discussion on what it would take to create a secure vote-by-mail system that somehow protects the voter's privacy.