“I’m sure you’re proud of you’re husband’s law. The security laws are frequently not followed. But the machines can easily be hacked by a person in the County, and that’s where the danger lies.”
First comes the security laws because some people are criminals. Then comes the party chairman of both parties to make sure the county employees do their jobs according to law and that’s what we did. A county chairman can appoint someone (or him/her self) to watch every single election activity carried out in the courthouse (and polling places in early voting and election day).
We made sure the machines were checked and locked up according to law. Any party chairman can do that. You see, just writing law is the first part - then you make sure the county employees follow that law. If the machines are locked up according to law, no one can get to them. We made sure, after they were checked for accuracy, they were locked up and no single person could get in there. Due diligence is required every step of the way in an election.
People talk about going back to paper ballots. It is so easy to commit fraud with paper ballots. Anyone who thinks they are better have no idea how difficult it is to find fraud and prove it with paper ballots. Those are pieces of paper and pieces of paper are hard to keep together in pristine condition. They are handled by many people before the election is over. Thinking they are safer, is folly.
Mail ballots: I was the judge of the early voting ballot board and it took three days of work to validate mail ballots and easy voting ballots. At the end of every day, the sheriff came and locked that room. He had the only key. If the sheriff is on the ballot, he can’t have the key - it’s given to the county judge who in that year is not on the ballot. I had wire locks on the ballot boxes and I put a new one on each box at the end of the day and recorded the number of the locks. The next morning I checked to be sure that same locks were on the boxes. To get a wire lock off, the wire has to be broken and it is useless after that. If the number on the wire lock was still there the next morning, I knew no one had been in that box.
There is redundancy of security in elections, but it is up to the county chairmen to make sure their part of the election is fair and correct and that means checking up on what happens in the courthouse to make sure no criminal activity happens there.
Law allows elections to be monitored but humans have to do the monitoring.
As for California, that’s their problem.
With respect to $ and greed, I believe vote fraud is going to happen no matter what unless and until the punishment is severely increased (minimum 10 year mandatory, no parol). In conjunction, nullifying any and all elections where fraud is proved. Sure, many negatives come with that but hopefully the integrity of our system would eventually prevail. The life of this country depends on it. How can one argue against the obvious that our current system is designed to accommodate vote fraud. I appreciate your take but here’s a few ideas that politicians should pursue that could possibly improve the integrity of our system. The mandate of voter photo ID, eliminate motor voter registration, ink one finger, hand written ballot votes, eliminating absentee ballots as well as on line voting, e machines and mandate a triplicate count of all ballots using different people to count. Certainly the process will take longer but expanding the time of the election process could remedy that. Incorporating these things just might work. Maybe some things to address at a Con Con. Just my opinion.