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I’ve been a poll worker every election except when we were stationed overseas since 1974. As military we moved a lot so I’ve seen how it’s worked various places. Through the years at most locations I’d agree fraud is essentially non-existent. Notice I said essentially. What one precinct caption called soft fraud is a very real issue some places. What did he mean by soft fraud? Organized people bringing incompetent individuals, whether inebriated or mentally disabled, in to vote with a sheet of paper showing exactly how they were to vote or a slip of paper with the candidate they were supposed to look for. You can not do a thing about it as a poll worker even though you knew the voter was probably being rewarded or coerced unless the person voting tells you. I’m sure it had little impact on the national level but it certainly did at the local level. Local elections do still matter and they deserve to have measures in place to protect their integrity.
Everyone keeps talking about no fraud but then wants to take away measures that have been in place to protect against it. Some of those measures were put aside in 2020 because of the pandemic and people want to act like states insisting on reverting back to pre-2020 rules are somehow introducing new draconian measures to suppress the vote. You don’t stop locking your doors because no one has stole your car yet, you keep locking them because it works.
Here in South Carolina no new measures were implemented but there are still people concerned about fraud that want to reduce early voting opportunities -- because of fraud that never happened.
As always, the kind of voter fraud that Republicans claim to worry about is close to nonexistent.
Here it is again.
The Republicans’ Wild Assault on Voting Rights in Texas and Arizona
Based on data collected by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the incidence of voter fraud in the two decades before last year’s election was about 0.00006 per cent of total ballots cast. It was negligible in 2020, too, as Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, acknowledged at the time.
What began as thinly veiled attempts to keep Democrats from voting has become a movement to undermine confidence in our democracy itself. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...&utm_brand=tny
BS. Anytime there is a massive loss of chain of custody, there will be a highly organized group who will take full advantage of the situation. As far as the recount in Arizona goes, Trump won that election, hands down.
My question and I think it is a legitimate one: what about the voters who have died? Moved? Changed names and moved? There really is no procedure for validation. I still get ballots for the previous owner of my house who passed away years ago. I know women who get ballots at former addresses under their maiden name.
Then there is the whole issue of dementia patients / people with limited cognitive function being rolled out to vote.
I'm not really that concerned about in-person voting irregularities with photo-ID required. Too difficult to accomplish widespread voting fraud in that case.
What concerns me more are mail-in ballots. More likely to have irregularities with that kind of system, especially if everyone is made eligible to vote via mail-in ballot. Election officials didn't get to witness who filled out the ballot, and does the voter get a confirmation their ballot was received and validated by election officials?
I’ve been a poll worker every election except when we were stationed overseas since 1974. As military we moved a lot so I’ve seen how it’s worked various places. Through the years at most locations I’d agree fraud is essentially non-existent. Notice I said essentially. What one precinct caption called soft fraud is a very real issue some places. What did he mean by soft fraud? Organized people bringing incompetent individuals, whether inebriated or mentally disabled, in to vote with a sheet of paper showing exactly how they were to vote or a slip of paper with the candidate they were supposed to look for. You can not do a thing about it as a poll worker even though you knew the voter was probably being rewarded or coerced unless the person voting tells you. I’m sure it had little impact on the national level but it certainly did at the local level. Local elections do still matter and they deserve to have measures in place to protect their integrity.
Everyone keeps talking about no fraud but then wants to take away measures that have been in place to protect against it. Some of those measures were put aside in 2020 because of the pandemic and people want to act like states insisting on reverting back to pre-2020 rules are somehow introducing new draconian measures to suppress the vote. You don’t stop locking your doors because no one has stole your car yet, you keep locking them because it works.
Local elections are absolutely ripe for fraud. From non-resident property owners voting (which was allowed in Maryland until the 1980's), to people who've moved voting, to deceased voters requesting absentees, to business owners who live elsewhere registering at their business address plus more I didn't mention.
On the deceased requesting absentee ballots:
My almost 90 year old mother never voted in her life until she registered, by mail as a Democrat, in September of 2010 with the address of the assisted living facility where she lived. The only hang up? She'd died in July.
The only reason it was caught was the clerk who handled had gone to high school with me and stopped in at the funeral home for the viewing.
As always, the kind of voter fraud that Republicans claim to worry about is close to nonexistent.
Here it is again.
The Republicans’ Wild Assault on Voting Rights in Texas and Arizona
Based on data collected by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the incidence of voter fraud in the two decades before last year’s election was about 0.00006 per cent of total ballots cast. It was negligible in 2020, too, as Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, acknowledged at the time.
What began as thinly veiled attempts to keep Democrats from voting has become a movement to undermine confidence in our democracy itself. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...&utm_brand=tny
Voting by mail is safe, so safe that five states do that exclusively. I don't know of any security measures that have been removed for the pandemic. I worked as an election judge through the pandemic and nothing changed in my state.
Feel free to point them out.
And I was an election worker in mine.
I’m not going over this same crap again but my state had many changes spanning from early voting to drop boxes to online registration. They kept a few of the changes afterwards, and I for one am thrilled with the new early voting, but decided not to keep others, such as drop boxes. By not keeping drop boxes they weren’t suppressing anyone’s vote, they were just not keeping something they did under an emergency. There has been little to no fanfare here over the changes, but then again both before the 2020 election and after it, those changes were based on recommendations from truly bi-partisan commissions and publicly supported by the state leadership of both parties.
Quit pretending election fraud doesn’t happen. It does. The important thing is to find it, address it, and minimize it. People from both parties are guilty of it.
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I am an election judge, I swore an oath in my deep red county. My current term expires next year and I will have to take the training again if I want to continue beyond that.
I have seen what is necessary to make an election happen, up close and personal.
People have been unnecessarily riled up about election fraud and most of these people have never actually volunteered. They are quite naive about the process and it shows when they post on it here. Their chains are being yanked.
I am not concerned about anyone getting away with voter fraud on any type of mass scale. Far from it.
There is a nasty undercurrent behind these allegations. There must be another agenda.
Bravo - and thank you for your service. I say that as a former City Clerk who had a helluva time recruiting poll workers - in a red state.
My question and I think it is a legitimate one: what about the voters who have died? Moved? Changed names and moved? There really is no procedure for validation. I still get ballots for the previous owner of my house who passed away years ago. I know women who get ballots at former addresses under their maiden name.
Then there is the whole issue of dementia patients / people with limited cognitive function being rolled out to vote.
That is all up to the County Clerks. Both the county in Utah I was a clerk for - and the County I now live in - send the voter a confirmation of election postcard prior to the election.
If those are returned - then the voter is taken off the rolls.
People move ALOT….and yes, people die. It is the VOTER’S RESPONSIBILITY to re-register at their new location.
I have a silly question.
What will happen if no one will show to elections? No voters? People will just get fed up with games, no matter what those are, and say - meh, don't care anymore?
Actually - before Vote By Mail - this was the case in my city. I had a primary election where the turnout was 7%. I had NEVER had a total return that low. And this was after much publicity, mailings, practically spoon feeding the public about the upcoming election.
After Vote by Mail? We achieved a vote return upward of 50%.
I moved from Georgia in 2010and checked in 2016 to find I was still on a voter list in Georgia.
I asked to be removed.
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