Ballot Production and Handling - My Primer to Election Thievery and its Detection

11/16/2020 | Brian Griffin

[Brian Griffin]

I will look at what I believe are some of the weak links in election security. I am not a letter carrier or an election worker, so I don't fully understand US Postal Service or supervisor of elections office procedures. If I am incorrect in some way, kindly fill us all in while leaving my skull whole.

Anytime a ballot or its electronic equivalent is made, transferred or counted, there is an election security risk.

Legitimate ballots are generally made in three different ways - by commercial printers, at supervisor of elections offices or at polling places.

Commercial printers can print large quantities of ballots at a low per copy price. The printers that do this work understand the importance of security and act accordingly. The main risk with commercial printing of ballots is that quite a number of excess ballots must be printed and then safely stored and fully accounted for by the supervisors of elections.

In areas such as my own in Florida, with many different races and ballot items, on-demand printing is easier to manage than commercial printing.

Mail-in ballots in my area are printed at the supervisor of elections office and mailed out. Most are sent out using presorted first class mail well in advance of election day.

In Pennsylvania, mail-in ballot "Request forms must have been received by your county election board or other designated location by 5 pm on October 27, 2020."

Outgoing mail-in ballots might get pilfered at the office of the Supervisor of Elections (SoE), on the way to the US Postal Service (USPS) and within the USPS, by say a fortunately rare wayward diehard Democratic letter carrier. Ballots destined for heavily Republican postal routes would be the primary theft target. The amount of such theft in 2020 was probably small due to Biden having a wide lead in the polls.

One possible election security check would be to audit postage. If 50,000 ballots are supposed sent out by presort and 1,000 by first class, the SoE and USPS should have respectively paid and received the corresponding postage.

Another possible security check would be to audit USPS intelligent mail barcode records since the ballots would be sent though USPS machines one after the other.

The intelligent mail barcode includes a three-digit Service Type IDentifier (STID), a six or nine-digit Mailer ID, a six or nine-digit serial number which is either mailer or postal service produced and a routing code that is generally the zip code but may also include a two-digit apartment identifier. There are smartphone apps that can read intelligent mail barcodes.

The USPS has specific STIDs for "Ballot Mail", as shown by https://postalpro.usps.com/service-type-identifiers/stidtable

"Ballot Mail is any Official Ballot mailed to or from authorized election officials."

"NOTE: For other election mail (voter registration, polling place locations, absentee applications) use the appropriate STID for the mail class and ACS/IV-MTR services desired that are listed on the First-Class Mail® (page 2) or USPS Marketing Mail® (page 4) of this document. The Election Mail attribute in eDoc should be used to identify a mailing as Election Mail."

The STID document notes that "Additional First-Class Mail Green & Secure STIDs are available when you sign up for Secure Destruction." This "Secure Destruction" process might be another ballot security issue.

The USPS also offers Informed Visibility® Mail Tracking & Reporting: https://postalpro.usps.com/InformedVisibility

Ballots are one type of mail that the sender typically doesn't want forwarded. It is my understanding that if the USPS was to return a mailing to the sender, a new intelligent mail barcode strip would be printed out and affixed.

Any return-to-sender mail-in ballot received by the SoE should be secured and accounted for by the SoE, and audited.

Outgoing mail-in ballots would normally be delivered to mailboxes along streets, on houses, in entrance halls and in apartment mail rooms. Ballots would also be delivered through mail slots on single family, rooming and frat houses.

Most outgoing mail-in ballots wind up with the persons they were mailed to, as intended. A very small number of ballots would be pilfered out of mailboxes along streets and on older rowhouses, mainly from the first presort mailing. The request for replacement mail-in ballots shortly thereafter would give an indication of the pilfering problem.

People can generally request to be placed on an automatic mail-in ballot request basis, wherein a mail-in ballot is mailed to the person for every election, primarily for older persons. About 15% of senior citizens die off in the time between presidential elections, so automatic mail-in ballot request results in lots of ballots not likely to be correctly utilized. The only greater security risk is to automatically mail out ballots to every person, dead or alive, moved or still resident, on voter rolls.

There are three major types of mail-in ballots, one-time request, initial (of an automatic mail-in ballot request) and sequential. The first two types are expected by the recipient, who will normally request a replacement "provisional" ballot if the initial or one-time request ballot not received on a timely basis.

The sequential mail-in ballots might be held by relatives, landlords, roommates, new homeowners, or be left sitting in the mailboxes of unoccupied housing units. All types of ballots might land up on the floors of multiple occupancy houses with door mail slots or in common areas of frat houses.

Ballots without the addressee in residence might wind up being thrown in the trash, placed in a recycling bin or where an election is tight, being voted illegally (by a relative, landlord, roommate or housemate). The mail-in ballots voted illegally would generally arrive at the Supervisor of Elections (SoE) office with a security envelope signature not correlating with that of the person for whom it was intended, but probably having characteristics of someone else registered to vote at the same address.

The paper recycling system is probably the great security weakness of mail-in voting. Blank ballots and ballot security envelopes might be retrieved from recycling bins and at recycling facilities by ballot bounty hunters or overly devoted Democrats. If the retrieved ballots are voted illegally, they would generally arrive at the Supervisor of Elections (SoE) office with a signature not correlating with that of the person for whom it was intended.

The official USPS Service Type IDentifier (STID) document notes that "Ballot Returns" "Voter to Board of Elections" should use STID codes 777, 778, 779 for First-Class Mail Reply Envelopes, Business Reply Mail by ZIP Envelopes and Permit Reply Mail by ZIP Envelopes respectively.

The USPS will carefully track the postage charges (and probably the dates) associated with Business Reply Mail by ZIP Envelopes and Permit Reply Mail by ZIP Envelopes.

Mail-in ballots sent back to an SoE via the USPS should each bear an intelligent mail barcode and a postmark, which should normally be legible. Some ballots might have gotten pulled out of mail streams without getting postmarks or barcodes by federal court order.

Some "mail-in ballots" might have been delivered back to the Supervisor of Elections (SoE) without going back through the postal system. Their security envelopes will generally not be stamped and won't bear postmarks, but should bear the intended voter's name, address and a date (typically that of election day or shortly before).

"Mail-in" ballots received by the SoE are supposed to be logged in by the election workers, but not always on a same day basis. "Mail-in" ballots not logged in by election workers in clearly lawful time might be audited with the aid of USPS Business/Permit Reply, Informed Visibility® and intelligent mail barcode records.

It should be noted that quite a number of Washington, DC residents, both Republican and Democratic, probably vote for President by absentee ballot from their home states. I don't know the legality of this. About 2,000 adult residents of DC might be voting by Pennsylvania absentee ballot and a few hundred DC residents might have voted in person in Pennsylvania for Biden.

It may be a frequent practice of Chicagoland residents from Wisconsin to retain a Wisconsin voting address since Illinois is so Democratic and Wisconsin is now a swing state. The Chicagoland residents might vote in Wisconsin races by Wisconsin absentee ballot or in-person in Wisconsin.

Fortunately, in-person voting is much more controlled and secure than mail-in voting, especially when photo ID is required.

In some states, same-day registration is allowed. This practice might be abused, say by out-of-state leftists showing up in Kenosha to demonstrate and vote(in-person). Major leftist corporations have information suitable for tracing on such cheaters, but Republicans might have to ferret suspected cheaters out by examining social media or sending them $10 checks or $25 pre-paid debit cards.

It is impractical to specifically identify a ballot voted by an ineligible person, but if an ineligible ballot was voted around 10:30am at voting location X, it may be possible to show the improper ballot was a vote for Biden by having Republicans who got ballots at location X between 10:15am and 10:45 identify their ballots. It may be possible to identify when the ineligible ballot was voted within a minute or so by technical means such as cellphone records.

The next possibility of election fraud is during the vote counting. This possibility would take on great importance in this presidential election since opportunities to cheat for Biden earlier were quite often thought not to be necessary due to defective polling.

The easiest way to cheat during the counting phase (or recounting phase) is to count ballots heavily favoring the desired candidate twice. Stretching the counting process out timewise to maximize cheating and mistake opportunities and keeping election observers few and far away are important. Mixing the order of ballots to prevent the easy detection of double counting by correlation (and its possible reversal) is important too.

Counterfeit ballots can also be created. These might be created in advance of the election as well as after it. They might be created on the same type of machine as the Supervisor of Elections (SoE) uses and therefore might have accurate character and line spacing. The SoE might use specialized inks and ballot paper so counterfeit ballots can be detected by technology available to the FBI.

Counterfeit ballots will tend not to be folded since folding and envelope stuffing machines tend to be heavy and fairly rare. If a counterfeit ballot is actually folded, its folding distances may not be in the same ranges as with the SoE-utilized machine.

Mail-in ballots normally have been folded to fit in an envelope. In-person cast ballots normally aren't folded, and should correlate to advance and election day voting machine records.

It doesn't take a lot of room to store sufficient presidential election result-altering counterfeit ballots. Ten thousand counterfeit ballots could be stored in two bathtubs, or a small portion of one room, such as above acoustic tiles. Air ducts and spaces inside elevator panels are other possible hiding places.

Another way to cheat is via software changes, as has already been suggested here. Software-based cheating is both fairly hard to do (as it requires technical skills) and hard to detect. It is a mere a strong possibility at this time.

Data entry errors are possible during tallying. They are very easy to create and quite possible to detect.

A very well-known way to cheat is to change the rules along the way, such as ignoring a statutory signature verification step/ballot submission time requirement, to favor a Democratic result.

Warning: A hunt for election fraud should not be allowed to hinder essential state legislative action to prevent a shameless and apparently demented and dangerous Democrat from buying the pathway to the presidency with $7,000 bribes to parental voters and $10,000 bribes to student loan borrower voters. State legislatures reluctant to name their own electors should also bear in mind that this Democratic presidential long-to-be will come to DC with a close-to-communist quite probable president.

[kristinn]

Thanks. You put a lot of thought into this.

[Eagles6]

The Trump campaign should ask for volunteers here in PA and in all the contested states.

2,500,000 mail in ballots in PA

Each and every one needs a complete audit.

Easily doable and necessary.

The evidence of massive fraud by the dems would be used in legal proceedings and presented to the state legislatures with the demand that the vote not be certified.

[Tell It Right]

Thanks for your detail, Brian.

I'm not a USPS worker or election official either. But maybe I can use simple logic to help others understand it.

The same USPS that tells you not to mail cash money because they cannot guarantee it can arrive safely ain't got no business being trusted with tens of millions of ballots.