Absentee vs Mail-in Voting (updated 28aug20)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 5 August 2020.]

There has been a lot of confusion about voting by mail in the media lately; mostly purposeful with the aim of promoting a political narrative.  I would bet a good hunk of the ranch that many KVMR listeners are unaware of some very important details on what has now come to be the latest national election dust-up.

To start, let’s distinguish between two very different kinds of voting by mail – the first is absentee voting and the second is called mail-in voting.  Absentee voting has been successfully practiced for decades, and there have been relatively few problems of voter fraud or ballot mishandling with this kind of voting by mail.  In absentee voting the voter requests a ballot from the local election officials by providing appropriate information about him- or herself in the application for an absentee ballot.  The election workers vet the applicant by checking the active voter roll for the applicant’s jurisdiction to confirm that such and such a person is registered, and in which party for primaries, with a matching signature, and does indeed live at the applicant’s address.  It’s all very simple and easy to obtain a ballot, mark it, and return it in an envelope that requires the US Postal Service to cancel and date it.  Efficient processes for doing all this have been in place for generations.

However, in the newly proposed mail-in process, each state automatically sends out an unsolicited ballot to everyone who is on the so-called active voter rolls, and many states even send out unrequested ballots to people listed on the inactive voter rolls.  In almost all states these voter rolls are abysmally out-of-date, incomplete, and contain thousands of duplicates and those having moved or deceased.  In mail-in voting there is no process to vet the voter for accuracy and currency of information.  Depending on local voting policies, ballots are mailed all over the state to be received by whoever currently lives at the address.  By law the USPS is not supposed to forward a mail-in ballot if the addressee no longer lives there.  But the USPS often ignores this and forwards it anyway.  Then the ballot goes to only God knows who.

But these are only the beginning of the problems with mail-in voting.  Because of the sheer number of outgoing ballots, our postal system has not shown itself prepared to handle the volume, nor to properly receive the voted ballots.  Where mail-in voting has already taken place – such as in New York and New Jersey – numerous issues have cropped up, with lawsuits to follow, which now threatens the integrity of the completed elections.  For openers there is no way to verify when the ballot was returned, since the postal service does not cancel and datestamp prepaid addressed envelopes.  So, there’s no way to confirm which of the blizzard of ballots were posted in a timely manner as they come dribbling in for weeks before and after the election day.  And attempting to match ballots with out-of-date active voter rolls, without the ability to confirm signatures and still-living voters, forget about it.

Given this, it is guaranteed that the upcoming nationwide mail-in vote in November will be a zoo that will make the catastrophic first year of online Obamacare applications look like a precision drill team in action.  There is only one state, Florida, that has a working mail-in system.  The rest of the states, territories, and districts will generate history’s largest full employment act and gravy train for litigation lawyers, all paid for by the taxpayers.  And getting election results in any conceivable timely manner is simply hope beyond hope.  The chances are almost certain that the Supreme Court will have to step in and take weeks or months attempting to sort things out, a process that finally ends with a politically explosive, fiat ruling.  Why?  Simply because there will be no practical alternative to deciding such an election.

So why is this confusing bamboozle being foisted on the American electorate, especially since the problems with mail-in voting have almost exclusively occurred in Democrat-run jurisdictions and elections?  To find out, I recommend paying attention to the ongoing partisan debate on this issue as you figure out which political factions are promoting what kind of voting processes, and why you are not told about their differences and problems.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum]  According to the NYT, “A federal judge in Manhattan ruled late Monday that at least 1,000 disputed ballots in a closely watched Democratic congressional primary should be counted, upending a race that remains undecided six weeks after the election and that has drawn the attention of President Trump and embarrassed the New York City Board of Elections.”

And here are some related points to consider when evaluating the proposed policy to make mail-in voting the national standard.

• Democrats’ denial that there are problems is false on its face as reports have come in from numerous states citing a spread of problems, most from Democrat run jurisdictions
  • USPS delays caused by budget cuts and workflow inefficiencies;
  • Computer network problems;
  • New Jersey – “genuine absentee ballot fraud scandal” following the 21may20 New Jersey city council election: signatures not matching, received but uncounted ballots, mishandling & misplacement of ballots, voters bringing in handfuls of ballots, voters on registration lists who never received ballots that records show were mailed, almost one in five ballots were “disqualified by the board of elections.”…
  • Stanford research admits to mail-in fraud but concludes that “Claims that vote-by-mail fundamentally advantages one party over the other appear overblown”.
  • California – AP reported that more than 100K or about 1.5% of mail-in ballots were rejected by election officials for various reasons. Non-partisan Cal Voter Foundation warns that critical elections are decided by smaller margins than that which “can make a difference in a close contest.”
  • New York – many voters were forced to show up at polling places all over the state because they didn’t receive requested ballots.
• Mail-in ballots are variously sent by states to all voters on ‘active’ and ‘inactive’ voter rolls.
• USPS illegally delivers and forwards ballots to people who no longer live at address indicated on ballot.
• Pre-paid ballot envelopes are not cancelled with datestamp.
• "Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud," readthe conclusion of a bipartisan 2005 report authored by the Commission on Federal Election Reform, which was chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker.  And this was years before unvetted mail-in voting was launched which now Democrats want to make a nationwide election mandate.
• Fox News has reported that Twitter's "Head of Site Integrity" Yoel Roth is in charge of fact-checking efforts – and that he has previously referred to Trump and his team as "ACTUAL NAZIS," mocked Trump supporters by saying that "we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason," and called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a "personality-free bag of farts."
• Instead of suppressing minority voting, requiring more rigorous vetting has increased black and Hispanic voter turnouts.

If admitted mail-in and absentee ballot voter fraud exists but is claimed to have a non-partisan effect, then why is it that only Democrats promote voting by mail and Republicans want to minimize its practice?

Some more relevant links -

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new-report-reveals-perils-of-mail-in-voting-go-beyond-fraud

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nevadas-vote-by-mail-primary-fraud-concerns

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/13/889751095/signed-sealed-undelivered-thousands-of-mail-in-ballots-rejected-for-tardiness

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mail-in-voting-faces-slew-of-issues-nationwide

[8aug20 update]  The evidence is overwhelming that points to the problems, both ongoing and coming, that mail-in voting promises this November.  Only the diehard pro-fraud leftwingers continue to parrot the party line that voting by mail is the safe and socially just way to vote during the pandemic, and all other times too.  For them mail-in voting provides opportunities too good to pass up.  Here are two pieces which underline the points of my above commentary.  The first – ‘America Is Going To Vote by Mail. We're Not Ready’ - describes how unprepared both the USPS and local election boards are for the onslaught of ballot applications, timely voter vetting, and ballot counting.  The second – ‘An Autopsy of New York’s Mail-Vote Mess’ - provides a post-mortem on New York’s vote by mail election disaster.  And here is a report from The Hill on how the USPS management is being thrashed on the eve of the election in a desperate attempt to look like they are correcting decades-long problems to prepare for November.

[28aug20 update]  A reader pointed out that my stating, “For openers there is no way to verify when the ballot was returned, since the postal service does not cancel and datestamp prepaid addressed envelopes.” was not exactly accurate, since there is no uniform USPS regulation to not datestamp postage-paid bulk mail.  However, the situation is more complex than that, and still does not favor the USPS handling of the deluge of millions of mail-in ballots this fall.  Another reader did more research on the issue and forwarded these annotated links which I post below as received.

Read down toward the mid-point   https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/17/what-the-msm-wont-tell-you-about-democrats-voter-suppression-in-the-wisconsin-election/

NY mail-in vote mess   https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-autopsy-of-new-yorks-mail-vote-mess-

A state by state analysis and regulations  https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-vote-by-mail-in-every-state-

NPR says many postal workers don’t know that ballots must have a postmark https://www.npr.org/2020/08/18/903490612/another-post-office-election-challenge-makings-sure-ballots-are-postmarked

NY judge says count ballots w/out postmark  https://dailycaller.com/2020/08/05/federal-judge-orders-ballots-postmarked-late-counted-new-york-primary/

Here’s another  https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/11/politics/postmarks-mail-in-ballots/index.html

Calif election FAQs and code links  https://www.eip-ca.com/election_q_and_a.htm

Comments

[paul emery]

George

Lets continue our discussion on this post. Here's our last couple of comments:

PaulE 218pm - You missed the point. You are citing the desiderata of the California Elections Board and ignoring the policy and practice of the USPS re printed envelopes with pre-paid postage.

Read what the NYT did with such ballots since they didn't know their datestamp.

Posted by: George Rebane | 05 August 2020 at 02:33 PM

paul emery

So you are saying that the ballots are not postmarked in California?

Posted by: paul emery | 05 August 2020 at 02:50 PM

[George Rebane]

PaulE 633pm - I don't know how postmarking is distributed across the states, but the USPS policy that causes concern with mail-in ballots is that they are pre-paid and therefore not cancelled or datestamped. I suppose that the USPS could change that policy, but that would cause an enormous problem because of the volume of pre-paid mail they handle and give discounts to mailers because that eliminates a costly step in handling mail.

Bottom line, all these problems could be fixed if given time, thought, and money. Rushing into mail-in balloting for a large part of the country during the last months of a contentious presidential election is asking for trouble.

[Bill Tozer]

Hmmm. Let’s see what the NYT had to say on this topic.

‘Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises’

Almost 2 percent of mailed ballots are rejected, double the rate for in-person voting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-by-mail-faulty-ballots-could-impact-elections.html

[Bill Tozer]

PS;

https://m.facebook.com/PatriotPost/photos/a.82108390913/10157588140030914/?

[MikeL]

I still receive ballots for all of my children even though they all moved to different counties from where I live. I have several friends that have told me this also happens to them.

[Scott O]

Wonderful news:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/08/07/nightmare-more-than-200000-nevada-ballots-found-to-be-undeliverable-n764800
That's 200 thousand in just one county in just one state.
This next general election is primed for total chaos.
Gee - how about we show up on election day and vote in person?
It used to work just fine when the Dems were in total power in Washington.
Of course that means you have to put on some clothes and sober up for a couple of hours and remember your name.
Can't have that.
That would favor a white, conservative bias.

[Gregory]

Sober up? The standards for public sobriety are not a high bar... just vote before 10AM, you should be fine.

[Scott O]

Gregory 5:46 - "...just vote before 10AM, you should be fine."
You'd be surprised. There's a whole 'nother world out there.

[Bill Tozer]

SHOCK: CBS Experiment Proves Mail-In Ballots Could Be a Disaster

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2020/07/30/shock-cbs-experiment-proves-mail-ballots-could-be-disaster

[Scott O]

Bill 7:58 - "disaster"
for whom?
Who, whom?

[paul emery]

George

This is the summation of your provided link about the evils of Vote by Mail. Did you read the whole link? It was not necessarily supportive of your position. Not sure why you included it. Here's the quote at the end of the article:

From ‘America Is Going To Vote by Mail. We're Not Ready’

"It is obviously not the role of the president to pick and choose which methods states can use to run elections—but it appears that Trump may have realized that his attempt to de-legitimize mail-in balloting was backfiring.

Regardless of what Trump may say between now and Election Day, voting by mail should not be subject to a partisan campaign of scare tactics designed to undermine the legitimacy of the election. The practice is already widespread, safe, and accurate.

Allowing more people to vote by mail if they choose is a good way to alleviate the public health risks presented by having an election in the middle of a pandemic. It is not, however, a guarantee of a controversy-free election. Indeed, nothing is. That's why voters, candidates, and political junkies should be prepared for an election night that spills over into the next day, or even the following weeks."

[scenes]

It seems to me that all the talk about the pros and cons of universal mail-in voting, especially the sort that is sprung at the last minute, is just dancing around the central truth of the matter.

. Voting in person favors the candidate supported by older, more responsible people. Double bonus points for retirees.

. Voting by mail favors the candidate supported by younger people, the incompetent (who, no doubt, will get 'assistance' from an army of (D) voting helpers), and the dead.

I like to think of it in terms of whether you get better results from polling 100% of the population vs. a more select group. The answer isn't obvious to me, I'm unconvinced that voting should be universal, but don't have a religion concerning any method. It's a relatively new concept in any case.

In the meantime, people will cook up reasons why the method that favors their candidate is better.

[paul emery]

George

In California the mail in ballots are date stamped and the sigatures on the envelope are compared with those on the voter registration form.. those comments referring to this on your commentary are factually incorrect at least for California. From the elections website:

"Pursuant to Executive Order N-64-20, all registered voters will be sent a vote-by-mail ballot for the November 3, 2020, General Election. Registered voters do not have to apply for a vote-by-mail ballot for this election.mailing it to your county elections official.......

Vote-by-mail ballots that are mailed must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by your county elections office no later than 17 days after Election Day......

When your vote-by-mail ballot is received by your county elections official, your signature on the return envelope will be compared to the signature on your voter registration card to ensure they match. To preserve the secrecy of your ballot, the ballot will then be separated from the envelope, and then it will be tallied."

https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voter-registration/vote-mail/vbm-nov2020-general-election/

[Bill Tozer]

Punch Drunk One sez:
"Vote-by-mail ballots that are mailed must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by your county elections office no later than 17 days after Election Day......"

17 days???? 17 friggin days AFTER election day? That says it all and is the prime reason not to trust the friggin Postal Service or trust that incompetant hack of an asshole; the CA Sec of State who did zero (nothing but flee Washington) when the Congressional Democrat Campaign Committee was hacked when he was in charge. Countless Dems were hacked and he sat on his thumbs doing nada.

17 days. Let that sink in. 17 days AFTER the election, 17 days after postmarked!

Reminds me of many moons ago a goverment high ranking offical critized the PO's bad service. The Postmaster General immediately fired off a letter voicing his outrage and defense of the USPS to the official. The letter took two weeks to arrive...mailed from USPS's headquarters one block away, thus making the official's point in perfect fashion, roflmao.

[paul emery]

Just quoting from the law Bill. They have to be postmarked by election day which makes them valid.

[Barry Pruett]

California is going to mail a ballot to every registered voter, but our voter rolls are a mess.

http://barrypruett.blogspot.com/2012/11/dead-voters-in-nevada-county.html

In 2012 and of the 400 oldest voters in Nevada County, nearly 10% were already dead and two of those dead people actually voted (one by mail and one in person). No we are going to mail them ballots? Mailing these ballots to dead people (and cats and dogs as has happened elsewhere) is irresponsible and plainly stupid. Arguing that it is not a big deal and fraud won't occur is simply one of the most ignorant statements that I have ever heard. Y'all on that side of the room are idiots.

[Barry Pruett]

Paul states that the practice of mail-in voting "is already widespread, safe, and accurate." This statement is completely false. It is neither safe nor accurate. Paul: you are being lied to or you are so blind by DTS that you simply can't see the high likelihood of fraud.

[George Rebane]

The voter rolls used for mail-in voting speak for themselves. And anyone who thinks the USPS is ready for the onslaught should speak to any local post office employee to see what is already happening with the handling of the mails. Those are existential facts on the ground, the quotes from the literature are propaganda to assuage the unwary.

[paul emery]

Barry

That was not my quote, it was a quote from one of Georges links in his post. Go to this link from his post ‘An Autopsy of New York’s Mail-Vote Mess

https://reason.com/2020/08/06/america-is-going-to-vote-by-mail-were-not-ready/

Right at the end you'll find what I quoted that reads:

"Regardless of what Trump may say between now and Election Day, voting by mail should not be subject to a partisan campaign of scare tactics designed to undermine the legitimacy of the election. The practice is already widespread, safe, and accurate."

Quite simply George was inaccurate when he said California Votes by mail did not get dated postmarks when mailed.

[scenes]

Surprisingly, even when using the strongest sort of 'newscraft', it appears more complicated than you might think.

http://www.wicz.com/story/42480487/postmarks-come-under-scrutiny-as-states-prepare-for-mail-in-voting

"In New York, so many absentee ballots for the primary were invalidated because they lacked a postmark that voters won relief from a federal judge in a lawsuit to get some of the formerly disqualified ballots counted. And in Virginia, the state's Board of Elections this week adopted a regulation requiring that absentee ballot mail include intelligent mail barcodes, another way to track where a piece of mail is in the system."

You really do have to admire this as a master plan. The folks who benefit most from universal mail-in ballots, long term Democratic politicians, are using The Plague to get it going just-this-once. You know darned well that this is never going away. It's not dissimilar to the masterstroke of mass immigration that Sen Kennedy fired off...political advantage combined with completely unknown (at the time) side effects.

[scenes]

in any case, it's bound to be a mess.

https://apnews.com/a45421048cd89938df7c882891a97db5

"LOS ANGELES (AP) — More than 100,000 mail-in ballots were rejected by California election officials during the March presidential primary, according to data obtained by The Associated Press that highlights a glaring gap in the state’s effort to ensure every vote is counted."

...not that that matters. It's a single party state, mostly run by unelected drones in a huge bureaucracy, and they're gonna do what they're gonna do.

The real problem is that the government has such a huge role in your life in the modern era that it really matters who has their hand at the tiller.

[George Rebane]

PaulE 1218pm - Paul, the article confuses requested abasentee ballot voting with 'mail-in' voting that involves everyone - dead/alive, here/gone - getting a ballot a very short time before election date (so that the most eligible voters can register in time). This period is as short as 7 days, which according to my conversations with the NC USPS, is too little time for the ballots to get to the voter, and then turned around and mailed back in. It really doesn't matter what we claim right now, the vote by mail ballots are going to be a mess, and Trump is quite right about that.

What is a more interesting discussion is that leftwingers don't recognize existential evidence of fraud, but only recognize fraud if someone is convicted of it. This fits well with their expectation of un-prosecuted fraud.

[paul emery]

But George what is the likelihood of fraud for mail in ballots that have been dated and postmarked and have signatures that match one on the envelope that is mailed and the other on the voter registration. When a mail in ballot comes in the signatures are compared and the vote is only counted if they match. that;s the way it works in California anyway.

Also do you give Trump the prerogative to pick what States can use Mail in Voting? He already says Florida is OK but not Nevada for example. Can you share what criteria he uses to make that judgement?

[Walt]

Emery is hoping for MANY ballots to be tossed.
How many ballots never make it Emery? How many get tossed without even being opened?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/states-reject-tens-thousands-mail-ballots-year-s-primaries-setting-n1233833
"States reject tens of thousands of mail ballots in this year's primaries"

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/16/new-york-mail-in-ballots-thrown-out/
"New York’s 12th Congressional District, which covers Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, 20 percent of mail-in ballots will be thrown out for a variety of reasons. The documents represent a “preliminary staff review” of ballots, and official decisions are ongoing."

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2020/0714/Why-California-threw-out-100-000-mail-in-primary-ballots
"Tens of thousands of mail-in ballots were voided because of mistakes during the March presidential primary in California."

If you can go out and protest,, you can stand in line and vote.

[George Rebane]

PaulE 124pm - That's the way it's supposed to work, but has not always worked like that, even in California.

"Also do you give Trump the prerogative to pick what States can use Mail in Voting?" This is a bit embarrassing again. Paul, our president does NOT have a prerogative for such picks. When he talks about that, he's using his bully pulpit. What's sad is that leftwing constituents know so little about the operation of our governments at all levels, that they actually believe whatever claptrap their thought leaders tell them about the meaning of what Trump said or plans to do. And the thought leaders are equally ignorant or horribly cynical in spreading such 'information' to their followers. Are you one of the followers or a thought leader?

And my sharing Trump's decision criteria, have you gone totally off the rails?

[Paul Emery]

So Trump is lying to the American People when he says that right George?

George, lying is lying. Would you give Hillary, Obama or Biden the same slack?

[fish]

Posted by: Paul Emery | 13 August 2020 at 04:43 PM

Are you voting for Biden Punch?

[Walt]

Ignoring facts in evidence Emery? Cheat by mail is your only hope of getting the Marxists elected.

[Paul Emery]

My secret fish

[fish]

Posted by: Paul Emery | 13 August 2020 at 05:25 PM

My secret fish

I’ll take that as a yes.

You do know that your preferred candidate is a serial fabulist? A liar .....Punch.

[Walt]

Of course Emery is voting for Liar Biden.(and womanizer)
LIBS lie. That's what they do. It's only Repub liars (alleged)
Does the buzzard O Broad St. take issue with...
NOW WAIT A DAMNED MINUTE!!!!!! Why is EMERY living in a town that has a street that disparages WOMEN??? You have apologies to make EMERY!! You better protest to get than name CHANGED!!!
You have plenty of help in town,,, BLM!!! That "B" now stands for "Broad".
Or are you still butthurt over a torn piece of cardboard?

[Barry Pruett]

https://news.yahoo.com/fauci-no-reason-americans-t-163906602.html

OK let’s stop demagogue in this mail-in fraud crap and let people go out and vote in person just like we did during World War I and World War II