How does US "early voting" works logistically speaking ?
How does US "early voting" works logistically speaking ?
I've seen picture of US lemming already voting, How does that even work
I volunteered a few time to run a voting station in France, one of the first stuff I learned is always have two persons near the ballot box. If a dishonest person is alone, it's pretty easy to add a few ballots in the box and sign near the name of persons who are too sick/old to go voting in person.
Logistically speaking, it's in general not too hard to find enough volunteers (especially on a Sunday) to keep an eye on the vote from Let's say 7:30 when the empty box is sealed to 22:30 when counting is done and you've signed the paperwork. But this work if the vote occurs only over one day.
I see US-Americans voting almost 2 weeks before the election, how does it happen practically, do you have enough volunteer to run ballot station for 2 weeks ? Are civil servant paid to do so ? How do you make-sure nobody tampers the box at night ?
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How would a dishonest person add extra? Here in Australia you go in, get signed off on a book, and they give you a piece of paper for your voting preferences. You don’t get unlimited papers to vote multiple times.
For early voting they mail us out a sheet and reply envelope, and we mail it back. Or you can go into a few of the early voting centres dotted around.
There’s also phone voting and come to you voting for those who require such services.
The person giving out the papers would be the dishonest one in this case. He could grab papers for himself or hand out more than one to a friend.
How would a dishonest person add extra? Here in Australia you go in, get signed off on a book, and they give you a piece of paper for your voting preferences. You don’t get unlimited papers to vote multiple times.
My hypothesis is that the dishonest person is an official, so they can be the person giving the ballots/envelope, they were present when we opened the box with ballots/envelope to put them on the table, and have access to the box (The one storing the empty envelopes/ballots) where they're stored to refill the table over the day. So getting ballots/envelope is quite easy, and all in less than 2 minutes you can put them in the box and sign near a sick/old person name. Looks like even easier if you close/open the voting office every morning/evening for a week, and store the box for the night. So I am curious about the safeguards.
In general that would be pretty easy to identify. If the number of votes were large enough to impact an election you’d see voting numbers that are far greater than you expect based on the population and demographics of the area served by a particular voting office. In addition you’d see counts greater than you expect when certain people are working but not for others.
In addition usually you have to check in at a desk or table to get your ballot. An official dishonestly stuffing the ballot box would also have to somehow fabricate real voters checking in at the desk, or else there’d be more ballots than people who checked in and they’d identify the fraud. Where I live you check in with your ID card so unless the official had a bunch of IDs of valid registered voters they’d be caught.
Lastly voting fraud is a crime pretty much everywhere, so getting caught is bad.
A more realistic version of voting fraud is what is being planned in the US: getting supporters of a candidate (in this case Trump) to volunteer at voting locations and having those people fabricate evidence of fraud. This can just be their testimony, but it can be used later in lawsuits to give face value validity to accusations that the election was stolen, and used as justification for violence or a coup. This is what Trump tried, poorly, in 2020. They will try better in 2024.
sign near a sick/old person name
With postal voting and mobile polling places the sick and elderly are given opportunities to vote in Australia.
Even without those facilities it would take a fair bit of effort to identify and sign for a statistically significant number of sick/elderly.
I think this is the strongest protection against this attack. You'd need to identify enough people at enough varied polling locations to be significant enough to sway an election.
Do too many at one location and it raises flags. Cast a vote with a name that also votes absentee or at another location, raises flags.
You'd have to distribute enough fake votes over a large enough area and across enough different shifts to not get anyone's attention. And that's expensive and hard to keep secret due to how many people would be involved.