I wasn’t implying anything here, no need to be a dick about it. Like I said: I’m my country we don’t have this system.
The kind of possibilities I was thinking about were more along the lines of an abusive spouse forcing their partner to sign a ballot, someone stealing a neighbours ballot out of their mailbox and forging their signature, or some family member doing the same to other family members.
Signatures can be forged quite easily if you have access to other signatures from that person, so I was honestly wondering what kind of system they have in place to ensure the kind of things mentioned above don’t happen.
Also, I guess I was kind of assuming ballots weren’t signed, in order to protect the anonymity of the voters, and that there was some more sophisticated system in place.
Voting in another persons name is a felony and there have been a few people who have been caught. Its not worth it, kind of like armed robbery of a mail carrier. Quick way to get fucked by the state.
I believe in Oregon (the pioneer in mail in voting) you’re looking at potential fines or jail time depending, with a potential mix of fraud, forgery, identity theft and other laws being broken.
But the state has this to say:
Is voter fraud a problem in Oregon?
No. Oregon elections are secure and protected against voter fraud in all but exceedingly rare instances. In 2020, out of millions of votes cast, residents and local elections officials reported 140 instances of potential voter fraud. Of these 140 cases, four cases were referred to the Oregon Department of Justice and two of those are pending resolution.
By comparison, in 2018 there were a total of 84 total reports of voter fraud. Two were referred to the Department of Justice.
A review of the vote by mail system by the state’s Legislative Fiscal Office found from 2000-2019 there were approximately 61 million ballots cast. Of those, 38 criminal convictions of voter fraud were obtained. This amounts to a .00006% rate.
Well I guess that still has the same effect of removing anonymity, but if it gets more people voting it’s still a net positive. To my knowledge the US has a concerningly low turnout rate for elections, so anything that helps…
I guess what I’m most concerned about is a situation where people are forced to vote for a specific candidate, and it doesn’t really seem to me like there’s any mechanism in place to prevent that (?)
The signatures are checked in an initial step and then the ballots are removed from the signed envelope and grouped with other ballots before being counted - it’s about as anonymous as in person voting.
I wasn’t implying anything here, no need to be a dick about it. Like I said: I’m my country we don’t have this system.
The kind of possibilities I was thinking about were more along the lines of an abusive spouse forcing their partner to sign a ballot, someone stealing a neighbours ballot out of their mailbox and forging their signature, or some family member doing the same to other family members.
Signatures can be forged quite easily if you have access to other signatures from that person, so I was honestly wondering what kind of system they have in place to ensure the kind of things mentioned above don’t happen.
Also, I guess I was kind of assuming ballots weren’t signed, in order to protect the anonymity of the voters, and that there was some more sophisticated system in place.
Voting in another persons name is a felony and there have been a few people who have been caught. Its not worth it, kind of like armed robbery of a mail carrier. Quick way to get fucked by the state.
I believe in Oregon (the pioneer in mail in voting) you’re looking at potential fines or jail time depending, with a potential mix of fraud, forgery, identity theft and other laws being broken.
But the state has this to say:
Ballots aren’t signed, but the envelopes the ballots are in are.
Well I guess that still has the same effect of removing anonymity, but if it gets more people voting it’s still a net positive. To my knowledge the US has a concerningly low turnout rate for elections, so anything that helps…
I guess what I’m most concerned about is a situation where people are forced to vote for a specific candidate, and it doesn’t really seem to me like there’s any mechanism in place to prevent that (?)
All the state knows is if you cast a ballot or not; they do not track how you actually voted.
The signatures are checked in an initial step and then the ballots are removed from the signed envelope and grouped with other ballots before being counted - it’s about as anonymous as in person voting.
Here’s an article to read about the history in Colorado, one of the early states to implement it: https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2020/10/01/colorado-mail-in-ballot-absentee-voting-how-state-perfected-system/3572176001/