▲
8
0
▼

What's so wrong with vote-by-mail?


 invite response                
2020 Nov 12, 9:31pm   1,936 views  18 comments

by SunnyvaleCA   ➕follow (0)   💰tip   ignore  

I've been thinking about the whole vote-by-mail thing and why it is so very bad. Fraud isn't even the worst part (long term). Most people jump to all the opportunities for fraud: vote buying, fake ballots, stolen ballots, etc. I believe there are plenty of additional opportunities for fraud, but that's only part of the problem.

Ask people about who would be a "good" voter and you'll often get responses that a voter should:
• be knowledgeable about the candidates
• be knowledgeable about the issues
• understand politics, economics, business; all the things that make the country prosperous
• have the country's best interest at heart
• be engaged with society and desire to make a positive difference
• have skin in the game

The problem is that vote-by-mail brings in additional votes from people who do not have any of the above attributes. It brings in people who receive a ballot (because they filled out forms to get a drivers license), but have no interest in voting. It brings in people who would normally not vote because they are so uninformed they don't even know what day to vote or where their polling place is. It brings in people who are too lazy to go to their polling place. Vote harvesting minimizes those attributes even further. Someone just hands over a blank ballot when asked (illegal). Or, someone who is otherwise too lazy and unengaged to vote, is just pestered to fill out a single selection and sign while the harvester waits, takes the ballot, and then does the rest.

Perhaps Republicans should start harvesting as well. But with both parties continuously raising the stakes, the only final outcome is a bidding war for who pays the most money for the ballot. That would decrease the quality of votes further (if it's even possible).

We're looking at the immediate aftermath of what has already been done, and the only path for Trump is to claim fraud. But in the long term we need to increase the quality of votes by promoting things that increase engagement and information of the voters. Vote-by-mail is a very clear step in the wrong direction.

Comments 1 - 18 of 18        Search these comments

1   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2020 Nov 12, 9:55pm  

it's easy thing to defraud, because you don't know who mailed in the ballot. ballot harvesting is good old ballot box stuffing operation, they had various forms of it even back in 1800's. That shit needs to end, makes voting by mail very easy to defraud.

- no signature verification
- anyone can mail it.
- everyone gets a ballot
- political operatives collect many and fill them out

recipe for disaster and fraud. Tucker really covered it recently, it's fucked up what they do with mail ballots.
2   clambo   2020 Nov 12, 10:11pm  

My objection to mail voting is twofold.

1. I don’t know if I actually voted.

2. At least 2 Democrats have touched my ballot after I have before my vote can be cast.

The mailman is likely to be a Democrat.
The person who works for the County who checks my signature is likely a Democrat.

The entire exercise of spreading panic and have the first vote by mail election in history was a deliberate attempt to steal or fuck up the election.
3   Patrick   2020 Nov 12, 10:14pm  

FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut says
it's easy thing to defraud, because you don't know who mailed in the ballot.


This is the main problem with them, imho.

I'm sure there at least a million ballots mailed out to people who no longer lived there, or were dead, or were not capable of voting for some reason.

And I'm sure a lot of those were filled out illegally and mailed in.
4   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2020 Nov 12, 10:17pm  

Patrick says
FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut says
it's easy thing to defraud, because you don't know who mailed in the ballot.


This is the main problem with them, imho.

I'm sure there at least a million ballots mailed out to people who no longer lived there, or were dead, or were not capable of voting for some reason.

And I'm sure a lot of those were filled out illegally and mailed in.


did you by any chance see that Tucker video I posted earlier Patrick? He showed dead who voted, a whole lot of dead people, a lot of ballots are unknown, etc... literally fraud bonanza. Just to check, I went to google news... total TDS there, total denial of anything wrong (fantasy land).
5   Patrick   2020 Nov 12, 10:24pm  

FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut says
total TDS there, total denial of anything wrong (fantasy land).





The funny thing is how the articles all dismiss even the possibility of fraud in their headlines, ignoring what is actually going on right now in court.
6   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2020 Nov 12, 10:25pm  

Patrick says
FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut says
total TDS there, total denial of anything wrong (fantasy land).





The funny thing is how the articles all dismiss even the possibility of fraud in their headlines, ignoring what is actually going on right now in court.


yeah the only place I can get honest info (no left or right spin) is epochtimes. it's nuts how journalism has disappeared from almost everywhere.
7   Patrick   2020 Nov 12, 10:47pm  

Thanks https://www.theepochtimes.com/ looks pretty good.

I think it's run by Chinese who hate the CCP.
11   SunnyvaleCA   2020 Nov 12, 11:52pm  

I agree with you all above that fraud is an issue and is a much bigger issue than the fraud with in-person voting. But my point was that even though there is more fraud, a still bigger problem is that main-in-vote harvesting (or just the ease in voting in general) means the voters are even less likely to have any understanding of the issues. Sure, fraud will destroy democracy. But misinformed voters will destroy democracy even faster.
12   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2020 Nov 13, 9:49am  

Patrick says
Thanks https://www.theepochtimes.com/ looks pretty good.

I think it's run by Chinese who hate the CCP.


I thought it's ran by Americans, not sure, but they might be related to a lot of local older newspapers. Reason is that they were on the shelves in many grocery stores, that's an old supply chain. Physical paper copies I'm talking about, that's not something China or someone without connections can just do. Likely someone who left existing media to start their own.
13   clambo   2020 Nov 13, 10:01am  

I agree with Sunnyvale, lazy voters who are unlikely to get off the couch and put the bong down are less likely to vote in person. They are also natural Democrats.
14   Zak   2020 Nov 13, 12:43pm  

Just to be clear, in person voting has been the norm during times when you could get mauled by a bear on your way to the poll, or have your hair removed by a hostile native american. The post office has been in operation since basically day 1. Why didn't we just have vote by mail when a small armed mail carrier group could have gone around collecting ballots, and saved this danger to the people? Btw, you could also get a bacterial infection from a cut on your foot and die due to lack of antibiotics.. still no mail in ballots. It also took hours or even days to travel to your polling place. Election day was still 1 single day, and you had to show up in person. If the government wasn't maintaining the infrastructure for you to get to the voting place, that was YOUR problem, and might actually make you think about who or what you were voting for.

Clearly I'm not clamoring for the "good old days" of 3/5 compromise, my point is just that in person voting has a long history and culture of happening the way it does for very good reasons. Mail in ballots give rise to the opportunity to start identifying who voted for what (or who didn't vote). Anonymous in-person voting with restrictions around who can be in and around the polling location, and with what messaging, aren't societal benefits we should give up so freely and easily.
15   theoakman   2020 Nov 13, 1:02pm  

What's wrong with it. I know of an instance of an 8 year old voting this year...that's what's wrong with it.
16   Tenpoundbass   2020 Nov 13, 1:07pm  

You hit the nail on the head when you said, it's only part of the problem.

We need a system that takes out as many parts of the problem as possible.

What's wrong with being a responsible Citizen with your shit together that you can obtain a proper ID and be credentialed and registered to vote in the State and County you reside in. Not going to be home on Election day? Oh well too bad, you don't vote. And US Military their Address should be their Location and outfit at the time they are voting. The Military should have special Voting machines that uploads the Vote to appropriate Election officials, to go over as provisional Electronic Votes from the Military.

The rest of you not in the Military can go your ass home if you want to vote so bad.

Also I don't think I want people who are so introverted, that they can't bring themselves to partake in the biggest private social event our democratic process has to offer.

I also think that voters should have a portal just like we have an IRS web page that you can get about everything you need to know about your current and past tax status.

Why not save how your vote was tallied and the other information about your vote, encrypted and your login is the decryption key.

Can someone hack it? Can someone hack your IRS portal, and how worried are you about that?
If the Data dump was hacked, they would have hack the pass phrase for every single record to see how they voted or more information than merely "If you voted"

At least anyone in election doubt could login and get the proof on how they voted.
Maybe if we had that, there would be no Republicans that could legitimately claim their vote wasn't cast or flipped for someone else.
Maybe it would prove there is fraud, and it would just be one more thing they can't do if we did that.

It's not one way they defraud the elections it's a 1,000 cuts.
17   Zak   2020 Nov 13, 3:34pm  

> Why not save how your vote was tallied and the other information about your vote, encrypted and your log in information is the decryption key.

not in 1 million years would I want this. This is what I mean about not having the societal experience of the digital age yet. And I'd prefer that we don't learn "the hard way" through some mass execution of everyone who voted for Obama care or something. Voting is private and anonymous for a reason. We think we're civilized apes now, but civilized is just a word when the rubber meets the road.
18   Tenpoundbass   2020 Nov 13, 4:46pm  

Zak says
Voting is private and anonymous for a reason.



And it still would be, your data in the record would be encrypted. If you logged in you could see if they flipped your vote. While nobody else would.

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions   gaiste