
One in 10 ballots rejected in last month’s vote-by-mail elections in New Jersey - Alupis
https://www.njspotlight.com/2020/06/one-in-10-ballots-rejected-in-last-months-vote-by-mail-elections/
======
justinzollars
I used to run campaigns in Ohio. I was also an elected HRC DNC delegate from
2008.

There are some real concerns with vote by mail.

One particular issue I noticed when canvassing was that the voter roll was
incorrect. It was not uncommon to go to a rental unit, and have 3 or 4
families registered at the address - all having moved out years ago. Another
issue was dead voters. Another issue was no one was registered at the address.

The voter rolls not dependable. It's not by design, but its a hard problem to
solve. Its worth listening to the concerns "of the other side" so that we have
fair elections.

~~~
slg
It is amazing how many problems in the US exist simply because the government
lacks knowledge about its people. From the census, to maintaining voter rolls,
to mail in voting, to general voter fraud, to stimulus checks going to dead
people, to identity theft caused by overuse of SSNs, it could all be solved by
having a central database that is updated whenever one of us is born or dies.

~~~
hef19898
Especially amazing as I know of no EU country that has the same problems (of
course some of those cases happen, but there we talk about single digits in
absolute cases).

Take Germany for example, or France as much as I can tell: You move, you
register a new primary residency, where you vote. Your residency is also you
voter registration (not sure why separating the two makes any sense). You
leave the country permanently, you declare it, when your French, you can
register at the consulate in the new country of residency. Guess what, you get
your ballot by mail to that address.

Carrying passports or ID cards, check. No unidentified residents.

Dead voters, no problem. Registered residencies are constantly updated with
birth and death certificates.

Voting by is, as is voting in general, a solved problem. Including paper
trails and enough voting places for everyone. Voting happens on Sundays.

~~~
rtkwe
There's a lot of reasons but the number one one is because there's only a two
party system here in the US and the Republican one by it's policies and
histories is almost entirely reliant on non-white voters not showing up in the
electorate. It's not quiet, in NC they've explicitly targeted voting days and
locations that are predominantly Democratic and non-white [0]. Second is just
our whole system, the states are independent and run their own voting so
tracking movement between states is harder in places that having intentionally
done something like motorvotor (where ID and voter registration happen
together). [1]

[0] [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-voter-
id/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-voter-id/)

[1] Again generally opposed by Republicans because it would mean more voters
which demographically isn't good for them.

~~~
microcolonel
> _Republican one by it 's policies and histories is almost entirely reliant
> on non-white voters not showing up in the electorate_

You could make the literal exact argument in reverse with at least as much
credibility.

~~~
cmorgan31
You had the chance to do just that and ended up not making an effort. It seems
far fetched to think anyone could become president without a sizable chunk of
white voters in the US just based on the census demographic data.

[https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219)

~~~
fastball
Well given that whites are a majority of the population, it makes sense that
the president would need a sizable chunk of that populace. What am I missing
here?

~~~
cmorgan31
It would be factually incorrect to say the Democrats have a history or desire
to disenfranchise white voters. You can not become president without a chunk
of the majority demographic’s support. Hopefully that helps shine light on
whatever you are missing.

~~~
fastball
Right, I understand that. I just don't understand the point _you_ are trying
to make in the context of the discussion.

~~~
cmorgan31
You understand my point if you understand the two sentences I had the desire
to type out on the topic. I wasn't responding to the full context of the
grandparent's post. I was responding to the weak attempt at saying the
Democrats and Republicans are the reverse sides of the same coin. Democrats
have no desire to disenfranchise the same way Republicans do as it doesn't
benefit them. They may try other ways to skew the results towards them but
this tactic isn't used by them.

------
Qasaur
I don't understand why voter ID is such a big deal in the United States. In my
country (Sweden) you _cannot_ vote without identifying yourself with a state-
issued ID card or passport, no exceptions. If you for some reason lack both
you need to have someone that can affirm your identity (and they need to show
their own identification papers). Nobody complains about it because it is a
necessary precondition for a fair and rigorous democratic system and everyone
implicitly agrees upon this. If you don't like it then don't participate.

I don't buy the argument that it disenfranchises voters. Even the poorest in
my country are able to vote despite having these voter ID restrictions. India
also has some form of voter ID too, and their population is almost triple the
American population and substantially poorer.

I can't help but think that there is some kind of malicious intent behind the
opposition to voter ID, but it is unfortunately very difficult to prove.

~~~
cbhl
I think that this is a fair question, especially if you don't live in the US.

The context is that certain populations in the US are known to be
disenfranchised from getting ID. Here's an example from the Washington Post in
2016:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-
a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-
elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html)

I actually really like the process that Elections Canada uses. They verified
that most Canadians have ID (86% have Driver's Licenses). They identified the
most common issue (proof of address) and added a mitigating process (mailing
Voter Information Cards). And finally, they have a fallback: as a third
option, a person's identity can be vouched for by a person who does have ID.
[https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=med&dir=c76/id...](https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=med&dir=c76/id&document=index&lang=e)
[https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=poli/r...](https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=poli/rep1&document=index&lang=e)

~~~
Qasaur
I can see why a tiny minority of people would be disenfranchised, but
unfortunately compromises have to be made to have a fair and rigorous election
system. Edgecases exist where people slip through the bureaucratic cracks but
those exist here too and I see _no one_ complaining about it. If you for some
reason lack identification papers you'd try to fix it by going through the
processes that we have to verify your identity. Nobody ever complains and says
that the system is actively disenfranchising them as that is patently
ridiculous.

~~~
cauthon
It's not a tiny minority. 11% of Americans and ~25% of black Americans don't
have acceptable voter ID.

I'd suggest reading through the ACLU's article on voter ID laws to learn how
the disenfranchisement is targeted in practice.

[https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-
fact-...](https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet)

Edit: I'll put two of them into Swedish context.

First, some rural areas in Texas are 170 miles from the nearest location they
could apply for an ID. That's about the distance from Stockholm to Karlstad,
which is much more difficult to travel without a train infrastructure like
Sweden's.

Secondly, the cost of applying for an ID can range from $75-$175, or ~650-1500
krona. I noticed in another thread you mentioned Swedish voter IDs cost 350
crowns. Our voter IDs cost 2-4x as much in absolute terms. Sweden doesn't have
a minimum wage, but for reference ours is $7.25/hr ($14,500 pre-tax annually,
assuming a full-time 40hr/week job) and our 10th percentile household income
is about $14,000 annually (~$122k SEK). So a voter ID can cost a low-income
worker about 3 days of pre-tax income, likely 3.5 or 4 post-tax.

~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
Do you really think you can get your documents done in Europe in every rural
area? No, you travel to a bigger city, often using a bus and whatnot. Part of
life, being a citizen. Every single opposition to having an ID to vote sounds
insane to Europeans (UK excluded but they call us mainland anyway), and I can
promise you they would take Republicans side on the issue.

~~~
rtkwe
The distances in the US are so much larger and the public transportation
infrastructure is so much worse the comparison boggles the mind. Consider 170
miles the distance quoted is roughly half way across the entire country of
Germany.

------
spanhandler
Looks like

1) about 1/2 of them are due to plain ol' User Error (not that there isn't
room to improve the "UI" so that happens less) like not signing, not including
required parts, simply leaving the ballot out of the envelope entirely(!), and
so on,

2) 1/4 are "signature didn't match" (most of those are probably false
negatives and should have counted, I'd bet, but given other issues I wouldn't
be surprised if people in the same household accidentally signing one
another's ballots or something else silly like that _is_ some measurable part
of the problem) and,

3) 1/4 are other :-/

[EDIT] looks like most of the "other" category is probably a couple towns in
one county having a vote so screwed-up that 3,200 ballots were rejected _en
masse_. That's about 20% of the rejected ballots, or about 2% of the total
vote, right there.

~~~
DebtDeflation
>2) 1/4 are "signature didn't match"

I've always felt that matching signatures was a terrible way of authenticating
voters. The person doing the matching is not a trained handwriting expert.
Also, like many people, I have subpar handwriting and I highly doubt my
signature today looks anything like what it did when I first registered to
vote 25+ years ago.

~~~
jvreagan
When I lived in King County Washington half the time my vote was sent back due
to mismatching signature. Heard similar stories from others. Maybe it stops
fraud, but the high false negative rate is egregious.

~~~
mkoubaa
maybe it is fraud. who audits the people who compare it?

------
koolba
> Still, the League of Women Voters and NAACP say the state’s signature-
> verification requirement is unconstitutional because it disenfranchises so
> many. Election officials are not trained in handwriting analysis to be able
> to properly determine whether the signature on a ballot matches the one on a
> voter’s registration, not to mention that a person’s signature can change
> over time and with age.

Every time I have to sign something that might be verified against a signature
record I get nervous and I bet my signature reflects it.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Plus, you have to _sign_ your ballot? It's supposed to be secret.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
You need to have some way to prevent fraud if you're going to allow mail-in
ballots.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
It's not as if signatures are going to do that. Especially not any of the
types of fraud that involve coercion or payment for votes. If you're paying
someone for their vote they can still sign their name. One of the reasons it
needs to be secret is to make it impossible for anyone to verify that you
voted the way they want you to.

I still don't understand how voting in person is supposed to be any more
problematic than e.g. buying groceries in person. Wear a mask, stand six feet
apart etc., what's the problem?

~~~
oramit
It's not any more problematic for the voters, yes, but what about the poll
workers? They stay there all day and skew older. The big concern is that
reliable poll workers are going to skip this year because of COVID (not
unreasonable) and we simply won't have people to facilitate the voting we
normally do. [https://www.npr.org/2020/08/05/894331965/wanted-young-
people...](https://www.npr.org/2020/08/05/894331965/wanted-young-people-to-
work-the-polls-this-november)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Would it be that hard to put a sheet of clear plastic between the poll workers
and the voters?

~~~
oramit
You can put all the protections in place you want but if volunteers don't feel
safe, they won't show.

------
verylittlemeat
I keep seeing people say "user error" to these problems as if that's an
acceptable answer to a quarter of submitted votes being rejected.

These are mistakes that are caught and resolved with in person voting.

I'm not in the camp that thinks mail in voting is impossible but these are
real problems that need to be solved before November. For our country this is
an unprecedented election, it deserves more respect than being explained away
by partisan politics.

------
davidw
Vote by mail works very well here in Oregon. Indeed, we _only_ vote by mail.
Here's our Republican secretary of state saying so:

[https://www.myoregon.gov/2020/06/19/vote-by-mail-works-
espec...](https://www.myoregon.gov/2020/06/19/vote-by-mail-works-especially-
in-a-pandemic/)

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>There are many security measures to guard against fraud, including a
signature line on the outside of the envelope that is checked against a
digital signature on file. Every single ballot envelope signature is compared
to the signature in the voter file to make sure it is a match. Our election
workers are trained in forensic handwriting analysis to determine whether a
signature matches. Each ballot return envelope contains a unique barcode that
cannot be duplicated to make sure that voters can only return one ballot.
Voters can even go online to track their ballot to confirm that it was
received and counted. It is a system that costs less, is more secure, and has
a paper trail.

There is a difference between a system that has been running for years and
evolved to work, and one that is put together in an emergency. Some things of
note.

1) They check signatures and the election workers have training in forensic
handwriting analysis.

2) They use unique barcodes to prevent duplicates

3) They have a way to make sure your ballot was received and counted.

I bet that for a lot of states ramping up mail in voting, they are missing one
or more of the above.

~~~
baddox
> There is a difference between a system that has been running for years and
> evolved to work, and one that is put together in an emergency. Some things
> of note.

I don't really understand this argument. You list some things that we should
do to have a secure vote-by-mail election, but you seem to be phrasing your
argument as if it's an argument _against_ vote-by-mail elections.

~~~
GhostVII
It is not an argument against vote-by-mail elections, it is an argument
against mail elections on a short notice, where we don't have the time to
implement those things effectively.

------
thephyber
A larger figure (21%) was reported by NYPost[1] in a recent NYC election.

The worst part about paper ballots (mail-in, ink, or hanging chads) is that
the intent must be re-interpreted by someone other than the voter at a time
after it's too late for the voter to fix any issues.

[1] [https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/84000-mail-in-ballots-
disquali...](https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/84000-mail-in-ballots-disqualified-
in-nyc-primary-election/amp/)

------
moksly
It always amazes me how one of the most technologically advanced countries in
the world has such a shitty voting system.

Big American tech companies know when you’re pregnant before you do, but the
government doesn’t know who lives in a specific house. So weird.

~~~
thingymajig
It's a very hard problem. I live next to a multi-family house in a college
town and the tenants move in and out so frequently that I'm not even 100% sure
who lives there... and I'm 10 feet away. Hell, I could probably only roughly
estimate the total number of people that live there.

I wonder if there's a solution in there though... maybe landlords should have
to report tenants on their federal taxes or something?

~~~
david927
Why are we tracking it via residency? If you're homeless, that doesn't
invalidate your citizenship.

We need to move to a unique ID per person with password, that you can link to
email(s), phone(s) or both. And then we can have on-line voting.

~~~
Spivak
I really don’t understand why there is so much opposition to online voting in
the US. I think people fetishize voting as this super hard problem whee it
must be anonymous, must be verifiable that the vote was counted and was
correct but in such a way that a person can’t prove to someone else their vote
or even that they voted.

It’s just exhausting. Just have an account with the government, fill out your
ballot, hit submit, post the votes publicly that are counted and let people
find their ballot by some ID number if they want and call it a day.

I’m willing to bet that more people than not are more than willing to use this
system.

~~~
dane-pgp
> let people find their ballot by some ID number if they want and call it a
> day.

And if your boss or landlord or spouse or cult leader hints that you should
show them you voted the correct way, what do you do?

~~~
Spivak
And if your boss or landlord or cult leader makes you request an absentee
ballot and fill it out in front of them?

~~~
dane-pgp
Then you have to hope that the system allows you to override your absentee
ballot with an in-person ballot, and that your boss or landlord or cult leader
doesn't have people watching the polling locations (or watching your movements
whenever the polling locations are open).

I admit that's not a perfect system, but it might skew the outcome of the vote
less than a system where governors can selectively reduce the number of
polling locations, and staff working at them, to produce hour-long lines of
people risking catching a potentially deadly disease from each other.

------
jones1618
Everyone is concentrating on the wrong thing.

There are two possible kinds of voter fraud (both extremely rare), "retail
fraud" (i.e. individual voters) and "wholesale fraud" (i.e. bulk fraud). Voter
ID laws mostly "fix" a non-existent problem of individual false votes with the
express intent of discouraging votes. The real problem you want to fix is
"wholesale fraud" which means securing the whole system from voting machines
(which should be open-source and paper-audited) to how votes are tallied.
Think about it. If you were going to steal votes would you go to all the
trouble to forge or hijack individual votes or would you bribe someone to flip
a couple of digits at a county office?

Of course, a trustworthy system includes how mail-in votes are tracked and
verified but that is a well-understood problem working well for thousands and
thousands of absentees, military personnel and whole states full of people who
have voted that way regularly for decades.

------
GhostVII
I don't see why we can't just have in person voting, but require masks. Given
that we didn't see any significant spike in COVID after the protests, when
people were packed together and shouting, it is pretty clear that the virus
doesn't spread significantly when you are outside with a mask. I think the
risks of 10% of the votes being thrown out are far greater than the risk of a
slight increase in COVID spread.

~~~
Traster
At the very least you need a universal option to vote by mail. There's a few
good reasons: 1. People are going to make individual judgements about how high
the risk is and you don't want people making the choice between safety and
voting. 2. It is disproportionately more difficult for people to vote in some
areas[1]- making the risk different. 3. What we're seeing more and more are
localized outbreaks, where certain areas have a flare up of cases, in those
cases you probably don't want to vote in person. 4. People who are self-
isolating would be disenfranchised.

[1]: [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-
pollin...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-polling-
sites-closures-voting)

------
viraptor
I was curious and checked the numbers from the last Polish presidential
election where the postal votes are not super common, but also a normal
occurence. The results are also split by the type of specific mistakes (card
not signed, envelopes not handled properly, etc), but I'll ignore it here. The
counts are:

\- 704,016 voting cards sent out (2% of registered voters)

\- 614,662 cards received back (87%)

\- 593,205 cards valid (84% of sent / 96% of returned)

I thought that 10% is a pretty high number (and obviously should be worked
on), but for context, 4% seems to be a "normal under covid" number if the
rules are pretty simple (2 envelope layers + signed slip).

------
zxcvbn4038
That headline isn't anything to be proud of, I'm not sure if 10% is supposed
to sound significant or insignificant, but at any sort of scale 10% is enough
to potentially change a close election.

What we don't have for comparison a similar breakdown for elections in
physical polling places. Politicians engage in all sorts of squabbling and
shenanigans every election in attempts to knock votes off of opponent's
tallies. I'm sure the difference between votes cast and votes counted is
pretty substantial in any election.

If the rates are similar then this is not much of a headline at all.

------
madballster
That's one of the reasons why the US makes it only to spot #25 on the
democracy index and earned the "flawed democracy" label.

------
qserasera
Now all an agitator needs to do now is to send a few obviously dq'ed ballots
to influence how people view the election.

------
admeyer
My signature has small variations each time I sign. Enough so that it
currently does not match what's on my driver's license. I foresee many ballots
thrown out depending if they require exact matches to how you signed your
voter registration. I hope there is an easy way for me to check if my mail-in
ballot is thrown out.

------
vaidhy
One of the key problems is in verifying citizenship. None of the existing
identities work well for this. I remember when India introduced Aadhar card,
it was explicitly mentioned that it is not a proof of citizenship and there
was a "challenge" to come up with a good identity proof for citizenship.

------
siculars
I recently had to sign many, many papers at a bank. They specifically told me
to make sure my signature matched the one on my state drivers license.

Looks like someone sold some hand writing similarity software in the name of
fraud detection. Also, for the children!

/Comments my own, not my employers.

~~~
Gunax
It's so odd... Like what constitutes a similarity? Do people not change their
signature between 12 and 50?

------
evan_
I wonder if the signatures actually didn't match, or if someone bulk-
challenged votes based on demographics (either perceived from the name or from
an actual list of registered voters by campaign contributions or zip codes).

------
goldenManatee
This is a good headline. Without reading anything else, there’s at least two
assumptions to draw from reading it: * they caught 10% of votes for being
fraudulent * they stopped 10% of voters from exercising their right

------
grizzles
States need to open all in person polling places right away and keep them open
to election day to prevent a civil war. This isn't going to be a normal
election.

Social distancing over time instead of space.

------
trynewideas
Just for context since nobody's mentioned it and it looks like a lot of folks
here aren't reading the article or EAC surveys, the rejection rate in 2018
general elections was 3%.

------
richwater
This election is going to be an absolute circus

------
google234123
200+ comments and 100 upvotes. Hmm, seems like some people don't want this
information spread.

------
lennydizzy
given how effective IRS is, can we vote with our tax return?

~~~
lennydizzy
that is if you reject my vote, I don't need to pay tax for a year

~~~
google234123
imagine how much deliberate voter fraud would happen if that was true :)

------
RickJWagner
If you liked Bush v. Gore and the hanging chads, you'll love vote by mail.

------
nisuni
I know everyone in certain social circles is pressured into saying that vote-
by-mail is the best thing ever, because the Orange Man said that vote-by-mail
is bad and you must be on the other side.

However, it’s time to admit that vote-by-mail has huge problems and it’s more
prone to fraud.

~~~
djaque
The article explicitly says that this wasn't 10% fraud. Please leave your
political views at the door.

~~~
nisuni
I never said that the article says that it’s fraud.

I said, taking full responsibility for it, that vote-by-mail is more prone to
fraud.

Why should I leave my political views at the door? Is because they don’t align
with yours?

~~~
Traster
The reason you should leave your political views at the door because you're
trying to pass them off as facts.

>vote-by-mail is more prone to fraud.

That is simply not supported by any evidence.

~~~
nisuni
> The reason you should leave your political views at the door because you're
> trying to pass them off as facts.

Never tried to do so, you must be mistaken.

> That is simply not supported by evidence.

It is.

