Is mail-in voting more susceptible to fraud than in-person voting?

The main reason voter fraud is unlikely whether mail in or in person is simply that massive fraud is all but impossible to pull off without collusion from the “inside”, meaning poll workers or those tabulating the numbers.

I think voting machines with closed-source code, and no accountability are the biggest risk to fraud.

@gorillapaws I agree with you. I’m more concerned about hackers interfering with electronic machines than mail-in voter fraud. In any case, my state is doing all mail in so I don’t have an option.

Particularly when those voting machines were purchased 20 years ago from companies that no longer exist.

Mail-in fraud happens with ‘ballot harvesting’, where an agent for the candidate goes out and hands ballots to people and COLLECTS the ballots for only the candidate, the others disappear.

My biggest concern with mail-in voting is the issue of ballots that are post-marked by the correct date but don’t get counted because of slow delivery or whatever. My county has had widespread mail-in voting for years now and there hasn’t been an issue. But it’s never been done on as large a scale as is being proposed for this election. So hopefully it is not prone to fraud or will not take forever to tabulate the results. Republicans also seem to be convinced that mail-in voting benefits Democrats, which is another specious claim.

No, not really. And if there was any fraud involved, it would effect all candidates equally.

That depends on who mailed it. Did it come from your registrar who sent it to you as having requested it s a REGISTERED voter. Makes ALL the difference.

@si3tech You keep saying that but they are only going to registered voters.

@janbb In California they are going to ALL registered voters, whether they request one or not, whether they are active or not. In Nevada, they go to only active voters (not sure how active is defined.

@si3tech Mail-in ballots are mailed only by the registrar. The registrar has addresses of only registered voters. Whether the voter is active or not, or if s/he has moved is not clear.

@kritiper I am not certain how you can make that statement. Fraud is done, it does not just happen. Large scale fraud is hard to keep quiet because of the number of people involved; however, what perpetuates is the allowed gap between the postmark and the final acceptance date. California allows the Post Office SEVENTEEN days to deliver a ballot that is treated like first class mail! Talk about inviting suspicion!

@crazyguy Yes, in New Jersey they are all mail-ins going to all registered voters. Perhaps you don’t understand what registered voters means.

@Demosthenes My biggest concern is indeed the ballots postmarked Nov 3 or earlier. However, I am not concerned about them not being counted. I am more concerned with why the Post Office took over a week to deliver first class mail within California. Or over two weeks for mail from outside California.

@Lightlyseared Every precinct, according to my understanding, is protected/isolated from every other precinct. How much fraud can you commit by individually hacking machines?

@gorillapaws As I said in my response to Lightlyseared, I have a tough time seeing how isolated machines can be hacked.

@stanleybmanly That is where you need the DEEP STATE.

“I have a tough time seeing how isolated machines can be hacked.”

Don’t understand computers Eh ! !

@janbb How is it then that people’s pets are receiving ballots? And how about the dead people never taken off the rolls? Thousands of ballots per state are not legal.

“How is it then that people’s pets are receiving ballots” Sources pleeze @si3tech !!

not charlie the wingnut

@si3tech: “How is it then that people’s pets are receiving ballots? And how about the dead people never taken off the rolls? Thousands of ballots per state are not legal.”

I don’t know. You tell me

In the context of American elections and how they’re funded, people should be humiliated to have fallen for the voter fraud scare.

“Some of the people, all of the time”.

@hmmmmmm Here is one link: https://disrn.com/news/dead-people-and-pets-among-the-half-million-incorrect-absentee-voter-applications-mailed-out-in-virginia.

@hmmmmmm I know from previous interactions with you which way you lean. So I think what you mean by “voter fraud scare” is the dud being spread by Trump in his own inimitable way. However my question is more fundamental: is there something about mail-in balloting that renders the ballots less reliable?

Mail in ballots eliminate defective or tampered machines.

Once again @crazyguy you are quoting a bogus “fright wing” media source ( makes up stories and doesn’t check sources) !

Andrea Gaines of the Virginia Department of Elections told The Associated Press, ‘Absentee ballots are only sent to registered voters upon request. At this time no ballots have been sent to any voters in Virginia’

@stanleybmanly How do you think mail-in ballots are counted?

Are you glad you can’t read the truth – - – - disrn dot com/ is a Fright wing ultra conservative “lie generator”. You quoted “charlie the wingnut”

Who you going to deflect to and direct your line of bs to next? ?

@crazyguy “I have a tough time seeing how isolated machines can be hacked.”

You should give this a read.

Also there is an election profile that is distributed by the manufacturer to all of the machines, it’s perfectly feasible that this shared file could contain code that alters the election. With the close relationship between election machine companies and politicians/political consultants/lobbyists, trillions of dollars riding on election outcomes, I find this very plausible, especially with evidence that suggests foul play. Remember that our system is winner-take-all and a few hundred votes here and there could have massive impacts on the outcome. Some hacked machines in strategic districts that flips votes from one candidate to another randomly 20% of the time can be more than enough to alter the result of an election.

IMO if they’re going to use computer voting, it needs to be with open-source software, on open-sourced hardware that is independently verifiable by interested 3rd parties and regularly audited at random. There should always be a paper-trail that can be verified against the digital results.

@crazyguy Does it matter how they are counted as long as they remain physically intact to be recounted as many times as necessary?

As necessary for what? To get the result you want

Not at all. I’m saying whether there are machine miscounts or miscounts by hand, the ballots remain to be recounted by all concerned.

https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/09/24/u-s-attorney-military-ballots-cast-for-trump-found-discarded-in-pennsylvania/#
1 example

@si3tech that like quote from Hitler’s _Völkischer Beobachter _ – - – (People’s Observer), the official Nazi Party newspaper.

There are many articles that address lots of issues with mail in voting. There have been many cases of voter harvesting that resulted in really weird results, missing ballots that were mailed and never received, and other really odd things that cast all sorts of doubt on the validity of election results.

@seawulf575 Ssource pleeze or it didn’t happen.

Or to quote your hero “Trust me Bigly !” Not a good source and not trustworthy.

@Tropical_Willie I gave two sources. I just clicked them and they took me right to the link.

@crazyguy Fraud would affect all political parties evenly so in the end, it wouldn’t matter much. What makes you think it would?? Are you making the assumption that only Democrats commit fraud? (The word “Democrats” could be replaced with “Republicans” depending on one’s POV.)

@kritiper It can and has been committed by both parties. That isn’t the same as saying it would affect each evenly. That is a gross assumption that doesn’t follow.

Realclearpolitics “28 million mail-in ballots went missing” BECAUSE the were never used !

NYTimes article says unsigned ballots are rejected as they should be !

Again sources for real fraud not Right Wing smokescreens

@Tropical_Willie While it might be that they were never used, it brings up a question. Many of these were absentee ballots which means someone had to request them in the first place. So the request was made and the ballot was sent, so why did so many people just decide they didn’t want to vote and toss it into the trash after requesting it? And one clarification, if you actually read the article, you would see the number they were using did not include ballots that were returned and there were problems with them…not filled out correctly, signatures were suspect, etc. In your rush to avoid looking at this issue, you are dodging important pieces of the puzzle.

It is not fraud (only a right wing smokescreen) !

WHATABOUT for ballots, More worrisome is Trump talking about not turning over the government is he loses.

Is going to calling his BFF Putin to hold on the the Presidency ?

@gorillapaws Nothing showed up when I clicked on the link.

You make good points. If the election profile that gets sent to multiple machines is tampered with, that should be relatively simple to catch.

Your second point includes a reference to paper backup. I think that is so passé. Many of us don’t even have paper backups for the way we voted because we just made it up as we were actually voting!

@stanleybmanly My point is that the mail-in ballot is counted by the same machines used to count in-person ballots. Only the verification process is different.

@seawulf575 I agree 100%. Ballot harvesting is a ticking time bomb which will blow up the schedule for many elections starting with November. I well remember the 2018 election. When I went to bed on election night I was under the false impression that the Republicans would hold on to a majority of Orange County seats. Three-four weeks later, the final results showed that the Democrats had swept Orange County! There were many reports of ballots being deposited at drop boxes in bulk!

There are always “many reports” of voting irregularities. But I am unaware of any large study that shows that there has ever been any confirmed large-scale voter fraud occurring.

To those who are expressing concern here. We know why this is the case. This is part of an explicit strategy for the theft of an election or outright cancellation of democracy. This is all out in the open, and you shouldn’t be attempting to play along with us as though you have bought into this. You have not. Period.

The US always uses this so-called “voting irregularities” bullshit to support coups in other countries. When it turns out that such “voting irregularities” never existed, we all then shrug our shoulders, having forgot that we supported an outright undemocratic coup.

Anyway, this shit is happening right here in the good ‘ol USA, and you guys are not only ok with it – you’re part of it. You’ve been called up to do your duty of pushing the propaganda by pretending you are sincere.

I just came across this article that shows voter fraud and potential voter fraud being investigated at several states across the country. And these are just a few.

@seawulf575: You consider that site legitimate? One America News Network? Looks like a Breitbart site to me.

@jca2: Do you see any reason for some states to define mail-in balloting rules so loosely that they raise a suspicion of fraud, even if there is no direct evidence of actual mass fraud? After all, in-person voting is defined to exclude the possibility of fraud. The only controversy about in-person voting that I can recall was on the need for a photo id. By the way, I feel strongly, that in this day and age, a voter who cannot conclusively prove that s/he is the right person, does not deserve a vote.

Are you asking me this in response to my comment about @seawulf575‘s link not being from a legit source, @crazyguy? That’s my only comment on this whole thread. My point, to @seawulf575, is that if he is going to post a link, it should be from something legit, not something “rah rah rah Trump.?

Both @crazyguy and @seawulf575 are “rah rah rah Trump” ! !

So @jca2 what else do you expect? ?

@jca2 You are correct that your only contribution on this thread was a question about the legitimacy of @seawulf575‘s link. However, my point in my post to you was that there is really no need for any link about past fraud. The only question going forward is whether mail-in balloting opens up more possibilities for fraud than in-person voting.

And, I think it does.

@jca2 I always find it amusing when one of you folks jumps right on the source and absolutely refuse to address the substance of the article. So you don’t like the source. Does that make it wrong? If the article was all innuendo and allegation, that would be a perfect reason to shoot down the article. But to shoot down the source without addressing the substance makes you guys look either close minded, arrogant, or scared…I can’t always tell which.

@seawulf575 Right on!