We heard that it was "easy and fun" to vote on paperless touchscreens in the beginning, and the same arguments are being used to promote an equally risky system, absentee voting. Most people are not aware that:
1. Absentee votes are counted electronically -- electronically, and humans generally never lay eyes on the actual votes on the actual ballot or the signatures on either the envelope or the voter reg card.
2. The signature issue is important, because with unrestricted vote by mail, some of the traditional checks and balances with absentee voting have been removed, putting all the pressure on the signature comparison for authentication of the ballot. Most people do not realize that the signature is not a pen and ink sig, but just a comparison of two computer images that came from who knows where.
Once vote by mail is expanded, the systems are changed so that we don't know
(a) if the voter reg signature facscimile is even the real one
(b) whether the sigs on the envelopes were signed by the voter, in ink, or printed on at a print shop by simply mailmerging the sig facscimile from the database
(c) whether the signature facsimiles being compared are even two different sigs, or just the same computer image being compared to itself.
3. We don't know who really cast the ballots -- was it a real person, or was a bag of electronically pre-signed ballots just dumped into the drop box, all voted by an insider, taking advantage of the thousands of vacant spaces provided by real voters who, the database shows, only occasionally vote.
4. When vote by mail is expanded from need-only absentee to no-fault absentee, it grows to 50 percent or more of the total vote pool -- creating a powerful and tempting target for tampering. When vote by mail is expanded, it becomes almost entirely an electronic, computerized process.
a. Ballot printing is computerized, using the vast vote by mail databases (which also contain political affiliation, voting history and signatures).
b. Ballot mailing is computerized.
c. Incoming mail sorting is computerized, with a new Diebold program claiming to scan the signatures off the envelope during the computerized sort process (no human need ever see -- are the envelope sigs real, or are they mass printed?)
d. The signature comparison is done only on computers, and does not use the real items, and access to that yes/no authentication database is controlled by an inside administrator and concealed from the public.
e. The ballots are counted by computer, and then the computer-counted batches are aggregated by a different computer.
Because people don't understand the system's real weaknesses and the absence of key checks and balances, attention is diverted to a little magic show: "Yes, but we notify anyone if the signature doesn't match" (the real issue: what about all the signatures that DO match? These are just electronic files shuffled around in a database inside unregulated and uncertified proprietary secret software).
Points to think about. Let's get people more informed on the real issues with vote by mail. Time to wrap our heads around the magic show and start educating others.
Bev Harris
Director - Black Box Voting
A national, nonprofit, nonpartisan elections watchdog organization
http://www.blackboxvoting.org