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The Guardian has a story detailing the firing of Christopher Krebs, who served as the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa)
President Trump made the announcement on Twitter on Tuesday, saying Krebs "has been terminated" and that his recent statement defending the security of the election was "highly inaccurate".
CISA last week released a statement refuting claims of widespread voter fraud. "The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history," the statement read. "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."
Krebs, is a former Microsoft executive, and was appointed by President Trump after allegations of Russian interference with the 2016 election.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:00PM (8 children)
That's not the case in all states. Some mailed ballots to all registered voters, even if they didn't request one. Even where there are systems in place to check the status, how would you know to check if you never requested a ballot. On top of that, even the most secure mail-in systems still rely on each individual to check their ballot status, which isn't a reliable method of preventing widespread fraud.
Despite those other major concerns, my biggest gripe with mail-in ballots is that they don't protect against someone watching over your shoulder while you fill it in. Because you fill them in out outside of a voting booth, they open the possibility of direct vote buying and intimidation. There is absolutely no way to know how many people were paid for their vote or were intimidated by a family member into voting a certain way.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:16PM (4 children)
So, you're saying that fraudulent actors are intercepting these uncherished ballots and voting them in the names of the registered voters who do not care, on a widespread basis, and that nobody is complaining about it?
I agree that it can happen, that it does happen. What I disagree about is that it happens on a widespread basis without significant numbers of complaints and proof of it happening.
In order to swing this election to a different result, tens of thousands of fraudulent votes all in one direction would have to be counted. At least some small percentage of those would garner complaints, hundreds at a minimum. Out of 70 million stood up and counted Trump supporters, how many have come forth with anything resembling a credible complaint? Dozens, maybe, and none that felt strongly enough about their impulse to support their leader to stand up and continue with an investigation that might prove their complaints.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by slinches on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:18PM (3 children)
The problem is that it is nearly impossible to prove. At best you can compare envelope signatures (where they exist), which is not exactly definitive unless there's a really dumb mistake like signing the wrong name. On top of that, intercepting the returned ballots is undetectable to the voter. So only the ballot counters would be able to detect that, if they are even allowed to disqualify one based on a tampered envelope.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:40PM (2 children)
So, my general mistrust of the postal system led me to return my mail-in ballot in person - which is a great way to short-cut the line BTW.
Still, if I had mailed in the ballot, I'd be tracking it online the same way that I tracked it after dropping it in the ballot collection box.
If you mean the people who open that box might take my mail-in sleeve, scan it and mark it as received and counted online, and then replaced my ballot with another one which voted FOR the Republican Senators but AGAINST Trump - yeah, that might have happened here and there around the country, especially in the smaller polling locations where they might have broken protocol and let somebody scan the mail-ins alone, but certainly not widespread - and very doubtful that it happened in the bigger urban locations.
By the same token, just because your ballot is scanned by a machine in front of your eyes doesn't mean that the totals from that machine got transferred into the larger count for the precinct, happens here and there every election. What I have never heard a report of is somebody doing a replacement of large number of ballots and destroying the actual ones - certainly that's possible, but there are reasonably secure (less than perfect) measures in place that would expose that happening on a large scale.
Now, in small local elections, I did read a report of an independent journalist who questioned the local mayor's race (something like 1000 votes cast in total) and got the runaround when trying to count the ballots for himself, then got railroaded into the psychiatric health system when he persisted... if you're one of those people, bring a buddy or two and live-stream video of your endeavors to more friendly observers outside the jurisdiction at every opportunity, because small towns can do some scary shit and make it stick.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by slinches on Thursday November 19 2020, @08:47PM (1 child)
Taking a mail in ballot to the polling station in person is definitely better. It eliminates many of the points where your ballot is accessible to an unsupervised individual, but not everyone does that. A mail carrier on their route could easily note who has what political signs in their yards and grab ones he knows are for one side or the other and either deface the ballot to invalidate a vote or collect a large number from a public mailbox and do the same before sending them on. Although, the biggest problem with mail-ins is that there is no guarantee that an individual cannot be coerced into voting a certain way. No one can see how you mark your ballot in a voting booth, but there's no such assurance in your home. Anyone who has leverage on someone (employer, abusive spouse, parent, etc.) could use that to ensure that everyone in a household votes the way that person wants them to.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 19 2020, @09:27PM
I agree, however, mail tampering is extremely rare for a couple of reasons. One, it's just so not worth it, payoff vs penalty is virtually zero. Two, it's extremely labor intense - even sorting and pitching by probable vote is tough. There are documented cases of it happening this election to a few hundred ballots, but even those were only targeted by neighborhood, not individual.
I was saddened to learn that there are, indeed, some number of truly spineless Americans who will allow themselves to be intimidated into voting one way or another against what might be their better judgement. The first, and worst, I learned of was a poor worker for some fat cat who was belly aching about how if Obama won he was "going to have to close down his business and send all his workers home without even a severance check, the money just wasn't there and he can't pay them from nothing." So, the poor schlub told me he was voting for the other guy, because he just couldn't afford to be out of work. How that logic works I just don't know, extremely short term thinking IMO, but I believed he was sincere. Nevermind that fat cat's business thrived under Obama, he managed to convince at least this guy and his wife to vote against him.
I am sure there are thousands of forms of vote coercion, possibly millions of coerced votes nationwide. I'm not sure how mail-in ballots make it any worse if the coerced voter really believes they want to vote a certain way, they should still be able to do that - take their mail in ballot away from their influencer and fill it out in private - I haven't heard any widespread reports of spousal abuse based on voting disagreements. And, I suppose - like the electoral college itself - if you run the castle of your home as a tight political dictatorship, perhaps then you wield the mighty power of the ballot for all of the registered voters you influence. It may be illegal, but plenty of illegal things go on behind closed doors in abusive relationships. The answer isn't banning mail in voting, the answer is in providing security for people who are in abusive relationships whether domestically or working for a poverty wage.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:26PM (1 child)
I always voted in person, if I voted, until this November.
The biggest thing I like about mail-in ballots is that they give me the time to research candidates, particularly local small races, online before casting a vote - make a more informed choice rather than one that's biased mostly by the party, gender and ethnicity of the name on the paper.
Direct vote buying, like hand me your ballot and I'll fill it in and mail it for you? Or, let me watch you fill in your ballot and mail it otherwise I'll fire you from your crappy $9/hr job? I feel like that would be a huge story, and all over the press if it actually happened.
I had a company attempt to get me to sign a gag agreement after they laid me (and everybody else) off the week before Christmas 2012. I asked what would happen if I signed or didn't sign? Oh, nothing, our investors just want all "employees" to sign this - implying: sign this or you don't get re-hired. Not interested in continued abuse, I walked out and feel no compunction whatsoever about telling anybody who will listen all about it. I seriously doubt that any vote buying operation of any size (100 or more voters) would stay secret for even a day before somebody thought they'd rather trade their job for 15 minutes of fame and burn their ex boss in the process.
If you're in that kind of family, it's time to leave home. Also, looking at the kink of the two parties, which party do you think would be more inclined to tell all family members to think for themselves and vote their conscience vs. intimidation to follow suit?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @10:42PM
"The biggest thing I like about mail-in ballots is that they give me the time to research candidates, particularly local small races, online before casting a vote - make a more informed choice rather than one that's biased mostly by the party, gender and ethnicity of the name on the paper."
Voting in person on election day gives you even more time to research the candidates.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @08:09PM
Except none of the states where Trump is disputing the results did that [ncsl.org].
And most of the states that did mail out ballots to registered voters have done so for years.
And the ones that did so just for this year's election aren't having their results challenged (except Nevada, which won't make a difference one way or another WRT electoral college votes) at all.
Facts are just damned inconvenient aren't they? Getting in the way of a perfectly good conspiracy theory. The nerve!