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Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

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Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#211

Post by impossiblefork »

bojan wrote: post #198
teh_infallible wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need an ID to drive, buy alcohol, buy cigarettes, board a plane. And people manage to do all those things.

You can do all that with a driving license, but a driving license is not a proof of citizenship and thus of your eligibility to vote. In Europe, you can't get a regular ID without being a citizen. So having an ID automatically means you're eligible to vote.

Yes, but a driver's license can be accepted as ID.

Just because a driver's license isn't proof of citizenship doesn't mean that it isn't sufficient, since it will have some identifier connected to the identity of the voter. You would show the driver's license, then the registrars would find your name on the list, strike it out, give your voting envelopes, and then you go wait for a private booth to become free and then you go into that booth and put your votes in those voting envelopes.

A Swedish driver's license doesn't mean Swedish citizenship. It can still be used to check somebody's identity. Citizenship is checked by seeing whether the person is on the voter rolls, not by their identity card.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#212

Post by thisisit »

mrj wrote: post #142
hackyhacky wrote: post #7

> Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems Yes. That's the point. The administration doesn't care about fixing whatever hypothetical mail ballot fraud may or may not exist; they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end.

He's spent years telling his supporters not to vote by mail. So during the election when there are problems with the mail, those will primarily affect the other party. That's enough to steal an election without more steps.

While voting by mail himself. Yes the hypocrite-in-chief. Rules for thee, none for me.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#213

Post by pvaldes »

ar0 wrote: post #200
monero-xmr wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having bare minimum protections against invalid voters , illegal immigrants or otherwise, is a basic precaution that every country on Earth except America does. The honor system we have here is absurdly lenient. I understand the Democrat desire to oppose everything Trump proposes, but imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person, without any ID check whatsoever. Europeans…

Voting systems in Europe differ by country, but for example here in Switzerland I just get my ballot in the mail, fill it in and send it back to get counted. And of course Swiss Post just processes this as a regular piece of mail, routing it to the address written on the envelope, without any weird cross-tabulation against voter registers or barcodes…

Some years ago a postman in Spain was caught with a sack in his home with 3000 votes that never were delivered to their destiny. This happened many months after the election. Last year in December some thieves broke into a small village post office and stole the money and the sack with 124 mail votes that were found later partially burnt. The few voters involved were allowed to re-send his vote before the elections and an organization of 12 people were detained later for this an other assaults to post offices before the local elections.

So yes, mail voting has a few issues still, not a lot, but is not impossible to break. If every worker in the post office is from one party and nobody in that party votes by mail, bribing and corrupting the system is doable, and even easy; specially if your work depends on it.

If you do this in small populations or at scale you could easily remove enough votes from the system until winning the place by one single vote. If you are malignant enough you could even blame later millions of "lazy" people for not voting and laugh about it.

Mail voting depends on trusting what your postman is not a plant.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#214

Post by Arodex »

massenpunkt wrote: post #206
sph wrote: post #201

> One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail Damn, never thought it was this much! I thought postal voting was mostly for people living abroad and less-abled ones that couldn’t physically go to a voting station. Is this common in other countries?

Yes, completely normal here in Switzerland. Approx. 90% vote by mail here [1]. [1]: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/how-the-world-s-most-f...

Voting by mail is, in the absolute, a bad idea, not because of fraud but because it enables vote buying: you can show someone who you are voting for, and thus receive a bribe for it. The "normal" way of voting in a booth removes that verification step and makes vote buying a fool's errand.

Hopefully, in a twisted way, the fact AI enables convincing fake pictures and videos makes this vote buying scheme unpractical now, but it was a vector of attack until very recently, especially with encrypted communication and cryptocurrencies.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#215

Post by sph »

massenpunkt wrote: post #206
sph wrote: post #201

> One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail Damn, never thought it was this much! I thought postal voting was mostly for people living abroad and less-abled ones that couldn’t physically go to a voting station. Is this common in other countries?

Yes, completely normal here in Switzerland. Approx. 90% vote by mail here [1]. [1]: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/how-the-world-s-most-f...

Don’t you guys have many more referendums than other countries by nature of your direct democracy? At that point streamlining the process becomes crucial.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#216

Post by MisterMower »

gorbypark wrote: post #191
microtonal wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

many people eligible to vote do not have the requisite ID and are unlikely to get it Just trying to understand as a non-American: which people are eligible to vote, but are unlikely to get an ID?

Canadian here, so take with a grain of salt. Both Canada and the US don't have a national ID system, at all (short of a passport). A state/province issued driver's license is the default form of ID. If you don't have a driver's license it is very possible you don't have an ID. Most (if not all?) states and provinces will have some form of "non driving" ID available if needed. However, it is optional, costs money and…

> It’s not that uncommon for an adult to not have an ID

It’s extremely uncommon.

You need an ID to buy beer, open a bank account, prove you are eligible for employment, pick up a prescription at the pharmacy, book a hotel room, the list is very long. You cannot function in society without some form of ID.

The idea that a large number of Americans are being disenfranchised because they don’t have ID is farcical.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#217

Post by cobertos »

linuxhansl wrote: post #130

> The United States Postal Service has spent months developing a U.S. Federal Ballot Mail Portal to provide election officials with a simple, secure, and efficient way to share lists of individuals receiving ballots by mail in their respective states. Why? Your job is to transfer pieces of mail from one place to another. Just continue that. Everything else is manufacturing a problem where there was none. Edit: Spelli…

Their job is whatever the government tells them it is, things like this don't just spawn out of thin air, there's usually rationale for it[0].

The post office already does way more than you think it does. Like identity verification on behalf of the government and tracking which houses are considered "vacant" or not.

It would be nice to focus the USPS, but all these extra services have to be done by _some entity_, otherwise you can't have the final result. In this case, the result is a functional, auditable mail in ballot system

[0]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/02/2026-10...

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#218

Post by MisterMower »

bojan wrote: post #198
teh_infallible wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need an ID to drive, buy alcohol, buy cigarettes, board a plane. And people manage to do all those things.

You can do all that with a driving license, but a driving license is not a proof of citizenship and thus of your eligibility to vote. In Europe, you can't get a regular ID without being a citizen. So having an ID automatically means you're eligible to vote.

In my state government issued ID is used to verify who you are. You are then issued a ballot if your name is also in the poll book.

Your eligibility to vote and have your name entered into the poll book is determined by providing a Social Security number or birth certificate.

So yes, a driver’s license is sufficient ID to vote in many states.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#219

Post by IndySun »

If a name and the address associated 'votes', how long before that initial vote is noted in the system? I'm assuming a situation in which there's fake slips out there, or a subsequent digital vote comes in. When is the discrepancy flagged?

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#220

Post by Arodex »

jongjong wrote: post #143

Voting doesn't work in a low-trust society. You can't trust the custodian of the digital system who tallies the votes. The problem is intractable. The president, who is ultimately decided by the custodians of the voting system, is not going to order an audit of the voting system which made them president in the first place as that would paradoxically cast doubt on the president's own legitimacy. The incentives are fi…

Why is Mike Lindell broke now? Because he tried to prove voter fraud and failed miserably. He spent millions.

>And look at the primaries; absolutely rigged.

Any proof? Oh, right, "vibes".

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