[conspire] Vote-by-mail elections and fraud risks

[Rick Moen]

Elsewhere, one of those gullible types who goes all-in on conspiracy
theories pointed to news stories about a druggie in Torrance, CA getting
arrested with, among other things, 300 vote-by-mail ballots for the 
Sept. 14th recall election, and asked "Could this be the tip of the
iceberg?"  

Example coverage:
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/300-recall-ballots-drugs-multiple-drivers-licenses-found-in-vehicle-of-passed-out-felon-torrance-police/



My reply:

Here's the thing you should be thinking about -- signatures.
News flash:  Stolen or counterfeit vote-by-mail ballots are just not at
a practical way to do election fraud.


Let's say you (or even a well-funded criminal gang), as Case A, steals
300 real official ballots plus their accompanying security envelopes.
Or, just to make it something that might influence a statewide election
in a state with 24 million voters, let's make that a cool million
official ballots and matching security envelopes.

Or, case B, let's say your well-funded, expert criminal gang
convincingly forges those.

Question:  What do you do about those on-file signatures of a million
real voters, that you suddenly need to convincingly forge so that the
Election Dept. optical scanner doesn't kick them out because of failed
signature check?  Hmm?  Hmm?  Class?  Class?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Torrance PD are now investigating and interrogating the low-life to try
to figure out (1) how he came by 300 either spare or real ballots with
envelopes, and (2) what if anything the plan was.  Might be interesting.  

But back to Case A:  Let's say one of those envelopes was mine.  In a
few days, I contact S.M.C. Election Dept. and say I don't have my
ballot.  Case A1:  They check, and they hadn't received a ballot from
me.  I drive over and do (IIRC) provisional ballot.  Later, if the
criminal tries to forge my signature and vote my ballot, it gets
rejected.  (States generally follow a "first to arrive wins" policy.)
Case A2:  They check, and say they have an envelope from me, but the
scanner say the signature didn't validate.  I say it was a fraud.  I
visit, and vote a replacement (non-provisional) ballot.  Case A3:  They
check, and say I already voted and my signature checked out.  This is
darned unlikely.  Criminals are going to find it difficult/expensive to
research how I sign.  But, more to the point, way more
difficult/expensive to do a million times.

In any Case A variant, S.M.C. Election Dept. now knows there's a plot
afoot to pollute the ballots.

Case B:  This is pretty hopeless, because suddenly the gang has to
somehow collect not only a million citizens' names and precinct numbers
(precinct number is on each ballot) but also exactly how each of the
million signed to register to vote.

As verified by Heritage foundation, Oregon, the pioneer in vote-by-mail,
having done it since 2000, and sent out more than 100 million ballots,
has had 16 cases of fraud.  And most of those were as easily detected in
a by-mail election as in in-person, such as the people who voted in two
different precincts.

https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?name=&state=All&year=&case_type=All&fraud_type=23761

Research about _why_ significant fraud via vote-by-mail remains very
impractical is easy to find.

https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/ef45f5_81a3affd554e4b5b9b5852f8fb3c10fd.pdf
https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/voting-elections/vote-by-mail-security
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/vote-by-mail-has-many-safeguards-to-protect-the-integrity-of-the-election-california-sec-of-state/ar-BB19SlZE
https://www.cnet.com/news/mail-in-voting-fraud-is-nearly-impossible-to-commit/
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/04/864899178/why-is-voting-by-mail-suddenly-controversial-heres-what-you-need-to-know#fraud
https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/how-does-vote-by-mail-work-and-does-it-increase-election-fraud/
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/why-vote-mail-option-necessary
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/23/fact-check-whats-true-and-whats-false-voting-mail/3462218001/
https://www.azcleanelections.gov/how-to-vote/early-voting/vote-by-mail
(last is obviously about AZ)