- Ballot harvesting (Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia all statutorily condone the practice, but from a practical perspective, any State that allows unmonitored ballot drop-boxes is a harvester-friendly State.)
Thanks for your reply with actual issues.
First note these aren't "security waivers" but just election laws in the given states you don't like.
As to ballot harvesting I'm not a particular fan and would be happy to see it eliminated. But the fraud associated with harvesting has more to do with voter suppression than voter fraud. Its a lot easier to canvas ballots from a neighborhood with a known political persuasion then Fahrenheit 451 them than to change votes.
I see no difference between drop boxes and any other method of returning a mail in ballot.
- Unsolicited ballot applications (Eleven States, including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Maryland, Wyoming, South Dakota, Illinois, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, )
Not something that worries me much at all especially during a pandemic. Systematic fraud on the order than can affect thousands of ballots is extremely unlikely. This is reasonably easy to detect and prosecute as well when the real voter shows up to vote or change their address the police have the address of the person who requested the fraudulent ballot.
- Unsolicited ballots (Vermont, Nevada, District of Columbia, California, New Jersey, Colorado, Hawaii, Utah, Washington, Oregon)
I'm not a huge fan of complete vote by mail elections. With good data management systems and public education I'm not too worried about wide spread systematic fraud arising from them. However the races where mail in voting can be shady is local elections. Small time operatives could probably run scams to buy votes or ballots. A corrupt sheriff could pressure people to vote for him. Basically just concerns about secrecy being violated in elections. But I can't see any large scale fraud or violations staying hidden or secret for long. But the races without a lot of interest and media attention are less secure.
- Obstructed poll observer accommodation; Pennsylvania, and Michigan, due to local determination authority. I see this is as a blatant violation of civil rights. States are entitled to legislate rules for partisan observers, but not if there will be meaningfully effective partisan observers. (Four States have mandatory Federal election observers; Alaska, California, Louisiana, and New York, which are linked to racial civil rights enforcement. This number is down from thirteen a few years ago.)
I think this is largely a nothing burger cooked up by Trump to inflame tensions. Many of the operations live streamed the process. Its one thing to try to sneak something past an observer but to put up cameras and live stream your shady activity that takes some nerve.
- Unpurged voter rolls (all states are required to “maintain” voter rolls, but only Wisconsin, Ohio, Kentucky and Georgia made the news for doing it. Even these States do not clear the rolls every election cycle.)
All states maintain voter rolls and remove voters when they get information that they move, die, or otherwise become ineligible to vote. States that make news for purging voter rolls usually are simply removing voters for not having participated in one or more of the previous elections. Depending on the length of inactivity time purging voter rolls can be more about suppressing voters rather than maintaining accurate data.
- Lack of voter identification requirements (California, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C.)
Again a made up Republican boogey man. People running around all day voting at different polling locations as multiple people is just not a big threat to an election.
My preferences for voting are as follows.
To make voting easy we should have:
1) Nation wide month long early voting.
2) Election day is a national holiday.
3) Mobile early voting locations that can go to places like retirement homes where people may be less able to travel.
To make voting secure we should have:
1) Hand marked paper ballots.
2) Votes should be counted by scanning machines at the polling place.
3) All votes should then be rescanned by a separate air gapped system as an automatic recount of every race.
4) Risk limiting audits on individual machines.
5) Voting in person should be the norm. (Pandemic is an exception)
6) Any and all voting software should be opensource.
