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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, @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