old salt wrote: ↑Wed Dec 02, 2020 5:40 pm
I agree with Barr. Absentee voting is fine. Voting via unsolicited mail in ballots, with last minute preparations, in states which have not done so before, is ripe for abuse. Any fraud or abuse undermines & dishonors the efforts of tens of thousands of poll workers.
I don’t agree about fraud or abuse. Theoretically possible? Sure. But you can say the same about virtually any other human endeavor.
Was there actually fraud or abuse? If you think so, prove it, don’t just speculate. Zid and her partner in crime claim dead people (Hugo Chavez) and aliens fixed this election. Really nothing needs to be said about that. The judges are taking care of these two charlatans.
Anytime humans do something more than 150 million times, there will be some mistakes. That’s why in most or all states there is a process to canvas the ballots, do double checks, etc. before final certifications are done. It is not uncommon to find small errors, as has been the case here. But in the overwhelming number of cases, if not all of them, the errors were simply human mistakes.
My conclusion, after having been through the mail in ballot process twice now (primary and general) and read an awful lot on the subject (as have many), is that the best practice is for each state to mail a ballot to each registered voter. No request is needed. If a voter is required to request a ballot, the voter has to do extra, unnecessary work, as does the election official who must process the request and then process the mail in ballot.
There are sufficient safeguards in the system to ensure that the ballot that was sent in was actually cast by the registered voter.
You don’t need to apply for an admission ticket to go to the polls if you want to vote in person. Functionally, that really isn’t any different from a requirement that a voter apply for a mail in ballot.
In terms of voter security, up until 2020, I have always voted in person. How is my identity checked? A 90 year old blind poll worker is supposed to “check” that my signature matches the signature in her voter book. She may or may not look at my signature. I could sign the name Mickey Mouse and I would be given a ticket to vote.
Were there some glitches in this election, which was the first time many states allowed widespread mail in balloting? Sure. Both voters and election officials were getting used to the process for the first time. But there has to be a first time for everything. It so happens that the first time for mail in balloting was 2020. So what?
I have no problems with each state conducting studies after the fact to see if changes could be made to improve things in the next election. I suspect most states are already doing that.
My own two cents is that probably the biggest source of the problem was state legislatures which, for political reasons, came up with unreasonable, even unfair, rules. Now that we are past this exceedingly divisive election, hopefully tensions will cool and legislatures will revise state election laws to smooth out the process for the future.