Why the campaign to convince the public that the voting system is safe and secure when the claim cannot survive a rudimentary examination? Go ahead, type “vote fraud” or something similar into a Google or Bing search field and you will get link after link praising its sanctity. Yet, what they assert is not proven. Just apply the minimal amount of mental energy to the subject to cut through the bogus mantra-like narrative. We are gaslit.
I had experience in running a precinct voting station in northern California in the 1980s, at the ground, nuts-and-bolts level. Granted, that was four decades ago and mostly involved in-person voting, but, looking back on it, the system was problematic back then. Basically, people were matched with their voluntarily disclosed addresses. The person signed the registrar’s list next to their alleged name and address and were handed a ballot. We were prohibited from asking for ID. They marked their ballot, handed it to a poll worker, and it was deposited in the box. After closing (8 p.m.), the number of ballots had to equal the number of signatures and then I delivered the locked box to the registrar’s office for tallying.
Can you discern any possible avenues of fraud in that system? The system is essentially reliant on personal honesty such as truthful signatures. Transparency laws require voter lists be made public. Any activist can have a copy. It begins with an oral statement of identity at the poll. How truthful is the person requesting the ballot? Is the signature an effective safeguard? Does the list accurately represent only valid voters? Delivery to the registrar’s office meant the ballots flow into the sea of paper. At the precinct level, any other concerns were above my pay grade.
And that was in-person voting, which is widely recognized as the most secure. What happens when ballots are scattered through the mail? A precinct voting booth is replaced by the kitchen table. What goes on behind those residential four walls is anybody’s guess. One person completing multiple ballots? Who knows? All that is necessary is a reasonably matching signature.
Are temporary, part time election employees apt to be forensic handwriting experts? I doubt that graphology is a widely practiced science. Will scanning machines and their software capture any fraud? Possibly, but so what. The fraud can’t be traced to any one particular ballot. The ballot has no user name, enters the ballot ocean in the county office, is already counted thereby cancelling a valid vote if fraudulent, while the fraudster disappears into the multitude, avoiding any dragnet because there isn’t likely to be one. So much for the deterrence of the law. So much for the proud boast “experts agree that there is no widespread voter fraud” (see #1). It’s hilarious.
I searched the net and only received affirmations of election purity on the first two or three pages of links. That might mean the “experts agree”, or they are either deluded or further muddying the reputations of “experts” in a partisan crusade. Pick a website and go to the relevant page. The reasons for the system’s alleged “righteousness” are dubious to say the least.
Let’s take a look at the attempted debunking of claims of dangerous levels of voter fraud in a piece that was produced by two UC Berkeley academics (see #2), a view dominating the first two pages of links in Google or Bing when searching “voter fraud”. The points raised are ubiquitous and partisan, but very misleading and cannot survive analysis.
The first obvious and bewildering allegation is, “Voter fraud is very rare….” This will not survive basic scrutiny. Compare voter fraud with shoplifting using similar computational methods. The rate of voter fraud (quotient) is calculated by taking the total number of detected instances of vote fraud (dividend) and dividing it by the total number of votes cast (divisor). With shoplifting, the rate of shoplifting (quotient) is determined by dividing the total number of shoplifting instances (dividend) by the total number of primary household shoppers (divisor). Yes, it’s rough but the two forms of larceny provide some commonality for comparison purposes.
If voter fraud is “rare”, so is shoplifting (larceny), using comparable computational methods. Shoplifting mathematically exists at a rate of .00846. The “detected” level of voter fraud in Arizona was .0000845. Yeah, the “8” moves back three digits for voter fraud, yet both convey “rare” no matter how you cut it. The voter fraud rate is corrupted by “detected”. If you are not vigilant because it is assumed to be “rare”, the low rate is a self-fulfilled prophecy. In addition, the devised voting system can make the discovery of fraud nearly impossible. Both calculations have their noise in the numbers.
Yet, that low shoplifting rate has caused some retail chains to fly the coop out of states like California and cities within it like San Francisco, L.A., Oakland. A low number does not capture the scale of the problem. Retail operating margins hover around 3%, but retail “losses” due to theft of around 1.6% of sales bites into the reason to remain in these locales (see #3). The “rare” rate of larceny is nonetheless driving some retailers into bankruptcy, or skedaddling.
Could a similar “rare” rate of vote larceny be discouraging people to vote? “Nah”, says the UC Berkely grads. They cite 6 reasons for why there’s nothing to see here. It’s balderdash.
Reason #1: “Only valid voters can get a ballot in the mail.” How “valid”? Are millions of “inactive” voters potentially “valid” voters? In response to a legal settlement with Judicial Watch in 2016, the California Secretary of State pledged to remove 5 million “inactive” voters from its voter rolls. L.A. County alone was responsible for 1.5 million (see #4). That’s a filthy list of voters. In that same year of 2016, there was about one person improperly on the list for every 3 voters (see #5). And the UC Berkeley grads are trying to tell me that only “valid voters” get a ballot by mail, or other ways? They asserted that there’s absolutely no possibility that some of those 5 million didn’t make it into the vote count. Really, in a wild shot-gunning of ballots through the mail like in 2020? It defies logic.
Reason #2: “It is very hard to make fake ballots.” This is your typical straw man. Photocopying ballots does not constitute even a small slice of the “stolen election” charges. The accusation might be out there but it is hard to find. The tactic of our post-doc candidate and her prof is to push an accusation that few if any are making and then knock it down. Straw men litter academia like in social media.
Reason #3: “Voters must affirm their identity”. How? By signature, and the eagle-eye (?) precision of temporary workers pouring over the signature books and autographs on mail-in ballot envelopes. And all of this is based on registration lists later shown, usually under threat of legal action, to be afflicted with a third flotsam – the dead, moved, or improperly registered. It’s like operating a Walgreen’s on the honor code in a sea of L.A. homeless. Then, compound the problem by flinging mail-in ballots hither and yon to be marked by heaven-knows-who in the unmonitored environs of millions of kitchen tables, all vouched by a signature. Remember, no ID. That’s a whole lot of pressure on temporary workers seeking to make extra money for Christmas. Anyway, “affirmed” or realistically not affirmed, any signature is irrelevant after the ballots enter the ballot sea. It’s counted, period.
Reason #4: “It’s very hard to duplicate mail-ballot envelopes”. Straw Man II. The “safeguards” of a government return envelope and envelope bar codes are beside the point. They are no way to guarantee the intended person voted. Get the signature later or produce a close approximation. Our grad student and her prof make this howler: “This signature usually cannot deviate significantly from the signature on their original voter registration card, or the ballot will be rejected.” Who’s expected to pinpoint the “deviations”? Yes, it’s our supersleuth temporary election workers, grandma or grandpa seeking to score a few bucks for the grandkids’ Christmas.
Reason #5: “The Postal Service will notice oddities.” Mmmmm? Our campus duo makes this announcement: “Anyone hoping to conduct mail-voting fraud would have to avoid detection by not only regular election officials, but also the U.S. Postal Service.” Let me get this straight, unionized postal workers receiving an avalanche of ballots will successfully weed out the fraudsters. There’s something about Arctic ice salesmen that keeps ringing in my head. This is beyond comical.
The final “reason” should lead to a laughter-induced seizure.
Reason #6: “Voter fraud is a serious federal and state crime.” Yeah, and murder, burglary, theft, extortion, racketeering, etc., are as well. So what? They still occur, and a lot in some places. Talk to any resident of south Chicago, or almost anywhere in California. Much of it goes unreported and falls through the cracks as untraceable. And that makes it like vote fraud.
And all of this is the corkscrew logic to avoid bringing a driver’s license to the precinct polling place. The Democrats protesteth too much. It’s intriguing. Is there something going on here that they are not telling us? States with ID laws make the things easy to get and accept other ways to establish ID. Compare it with the TSA requirement of ID at airports. Of the millions passing through the nation’s airports, the loudest complainers make one think of Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Red Brigades of 1970s fame. Bewailing an innocuous safeguard understandably brings to mind bewailer nefariousness, and rightly so.
RogerG
Source:
1. “What you need to know about voter fraud in California”, California Voter Foundation, 10/10/2022, at https://www.calvoter.org/content/what-you-need-know-about-voter-fraud-california.
2. “6 ways mail-in ballots are protected from fraud”, Charlotte Hill and Jake Grumbach, UC Berkeley via The Conversation, UC Berkeley, 9/30/2020, at https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/6-ways-mail-ballots-are-protected-fraud.
3. “Crime isn’t the full story: What else is affecting retailers in urban areas, in 4 charts”, CNN, 10/12/2023, at https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/12/business/target-closing-us-cities-crime-dg.
4. “Calif. Begins Removing 5 Million Inactive Voters on Its Rolls”, Susan Crabtree, Real Clear Politics, 6/20/2019, at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/06/20/calif_begins_removing_5_million_inactive_voters_on_its_rolls__140602.html.
5. “2016 Presidential General Election Results – California”, The U.S. Elections Atlas, at https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2016&fips=6&off=0&elect=0&f=0.