[conspire] Election Day is now (was: Rick's Election Analyses and Recommendations page done (and elections in mirror are closer than they appear))

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> Speaking of security.  There is a potentially big security risk with
> vote by mail.  
> 
> How do we know (hypothetically speaking) that Rick did not some how
> coerce the rest of the household to vote a particular way?  Or just
> let him mark their ballots?  Or maybe some thug in the neighborhood
> convinced lots of people to vote as he said?

Your point is well taken that coerced voting is much more concealable
using vote-by-mail.  In the traditional model of in-person voting, at
least in theory any voter can insist on taking a blank ballot into the
voting booth without any person accompanying him/her, and the
immediately feeding that ballot into a ballot box.

At minimum, it would really stand out if a voter's 'friend' absolutely
insisted on accompanying the voter to 'help', and the voter didn't seem
very enthusiastic about that.  And, even if occasionally one 'friend' 
slips under the radar of precinct officials' suspicion, at least this
attack mode doesn't readily support mass meddling.

But, for context, before getting worried about coereced vote-by-mail as
a new possibilty, stop to remember that it's not new at all:  All the
controlling party needed to do in bygone days was get the intimidated
voter to switch to absentee voting.