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CBS Affiliate: We Tried Mailing Ballots, And It Went About As Good As You’d Expect; Are Americans willing to suffer a 3% failure rate or higher in ballot submission?
Hotair ^
| 07/30/2020
| Ed Morrissey
Posted on 07/30/2020 11:07:08 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Forget vote fraud for the moment, while we try to forget delays too. Are Americans willing to suffer a 3% failure rate or higher in ballot submission in adopting mass vote-by-mail systems in a presidential election? Or even in local elections? Augusta CBS affiliate WRDW tried an experiment in mailing ballots, and had three out of a hundred go missing. And it took concerted efforts by the reporter just to get the other 97 back at all:
One thing is clear: You need to give it even more time than officials might recommend to get your ballot through the mail system.
How long might it take for that vote to actually arrive and be counted?
CBS News decided to test it, sending 100 mock ballots simulating a hundred voters in locations all across Philadelphia to a post office box. After some delays, 97 arrived. In a close election, 3% could be pivotal, especially in whats expected to be a record year for mail-in-voting.
This points up the added risks of voting by mail. It introduces several handling points between voters and the ballot counters that dont otherwise exist. All of those are potential points of failure. Furthermore, because the security protocols are more complicated, those introduce even more points of failure. And unlike voting in person, the voter never knows that they have failed and has no opportunity to rectify the errors and remain enfranchised for that election.
We didnt need this experiment to discuss failure rates in vote-by-mail systems. California trashed over a hundred thousand mailed-in ballots in its March primary for various issues. That represents a failure rate of just under 2% in an election where 5.7 million votes were cast, and thats not counting other disqualified ballots. In New Yorks primary last month, the New York Times estimated that tens of thousands of mailed-in ballots have already been disqualified and theyre still not done counting the vote there either. Florida also trashed tens of thousands of mail-in ballots.
That means, as the WRDW reporter noted in Pennsylvania, that a significant percentage of voters got disenfranchised. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won Minnesota by 1.6% of the vote, while Donald Trump won Wisconsin by 0.8%, Pennsylvania by 0.7%, and Michigan by 0.2%. Any voting process that has a 2% or greater failure rate will risk producing results that the losing side wont accept unless a landslide occurs in each and every state. And thats only in terms of the presidential elections; this same problem exists all the way down the ballot. This isnt a risk for Trump alone its also a risk for Joe Biden, and every candidate on the ballot this year.
This isnt a reason to postpone an election. It is, however, a very good reason to stop vote-by-mail systems and use the most reliable voting systems available in order to build confidence in the results. Those systems use paper ballots, with scanning technology to validate ballots before voters leave and to count the votes accurately and quickly, while maintaining the paper records for potential recounts later. If we can go to Walmart and attend protests for hours on end over policy, we can cast ballots in person, too.
TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: ballot; cbs; mail; mailinballots; usps; voting
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To: SeekAndFind
Trump tweeted this shortly before he tweeted about postponing the election.
This was the more effective tweet of the two IMO.
2
posted on
07/30/2020 11:08:04 AM PDT
by
Buckeye McFrog
(Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer)
To: SeekAndFind
And the ballots will be counted even if they have a Chines postmark and are all from Sum Ting Wong.
To: SeekAndFind
Well, since the lefty proggy monkies are so covid adverse and hyper about mailing their votes in, this 3% will mostly - statistically likely - negatively affect them in areas where they have a choice.
4
posted on
07/30/2020 11:11:28 AM PDT
by
LittleBillyInfidel
(This tagline has been formatted to fit the screen. Some content has been edited.)
To: shelterguy
And the ballots will be counted even if they have a Chines postmark and are all from Sum Ting Wong
and contain seeds
5
posted on
07/30/2020 11:11:36 AM PDT
by
Buckeye McFrog
(Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer)
To: SeekAndFind
“failure rate”. That’s what they’re calling “vote fraud” now?
To: SeekAndFind
In otherwords. They know a 3% margin in favor of Biden is all they can drag over the top.
If everyone Votes at polls Biden will have a really hard time.
7
posted on
07/30/2020 11:14:21 AM PDT
by
Bayard
To: SeekAndFind
3%? How about 30% of republican ballots will get lost.
Remember Bush V. Gore? The overseas ballots?
8
posted on
07/30/2020 11:16:03 AM PDT
by
Texas resident
(Remember in November)
To: Bayard
Obama’s speaking at Lewis’s service.....a full political speech about voting rights, changes in voting laws and on and on about basically restoring his legacy. About the protesters and encouraging they continue and completely avoiding they’re riots.
He’s preaching to the black community heavily...and his former supporters...on abot te cnstitution. Clearly he’s using this moment to preach against “whites” as he says.
9
posted on
07/30/2020 11:18:05 AM PDT
by
caww
To: SeekAndFind
Vote by mail is the ONLY way the Dems can steal the election. My Mom has a tenant, her last name has a hyphen in it..her mail was delivered yesterday, she got THREE voter registration letters..THREE..so what does that mean, she can vote three times? This is how voter fraud happens, but the Dems know this is the ONLY way they can win, the ONLY way
To: SeekAndFind
IF BALLOTING IS DONE BY MAIL, PRESIDENT TRUMP LOSES.........
11
posted on
07/30/2020 11:32:25 AM PDT
by
chopperk
To: SeekAndFind
But it's not the same!
They are equating normal random error/failure with a willful attempt to steal an election. One is an innocent mistake without consequence, the other a criminal, premeditated act. When the stakes go up, the cheating (excuse me, I mean mistakes) increases explosively.
Say your city/state mandates that everyone is mailed a ballot this year. That's a lot of ballots, boxes and boxes of them, all arriving at the PO in bulk. Now that's a prize worth going after, not the 100 or so test ballots that don't actually elect anyone. Say some unscrupulous person were to were to fill out and mail these ballots himself - not to the voters, to each ballot's polling location. Lots of people never got a ballot, but somehow they voted.
What happens next? Some people will just blow it off. They never intended to vote anyway, and never know that they did! A successful "cheat".
Some folks are dead, their mailin vote counts. Another successful "cheat".
Some folks go to the polls in person, only to discover they already voted. Will that ballot be counted? Will the voter whose ballot was stolen be allowed to vote? Maybe the mailin vote is voided. Maybe both votes count. Maybe neither. Successful "cheat"? Maybe.
12
posted on
07/30/2020 11:36:18 AM PDT
by
ZOOKER
(Until further notice the /s is implied...)
To: SeekAndFind
But it's not the same!
They are equating normal random error/failure with a willful attempt to steal an election. One is an innocent mistake without consequence, the other a criminal, premeditated act. When the stakes go up, the cheating (excuse me, I mean mistakes) increases explosively.
Say your city/state mandates that everyone is mailed a ballot this year. That's a lot of ballots, boxes and boxes of them, all arriving at the PO in bulk. Now that's a prize worth going after, not the 100 or so test ballots that don't actually elect anyone. Say some unscrupulous person were to were to fill out and mail these ballots himself - not to the voters, to each ballot's polling location. Lots of people never got a ballot, but somehow they voted.
What happens next? Some people will just blow it off. They never intended to vote anyway, and never know that they did! A successful "cheat".
Some folks are dead, their mailin vote counts. Another successful "cheat".
Some folks go to the polls in person, only to discover they already voted. Will that ballot be counted? Will the voter whose ballot was stolen be allowed to vote? Maybe the mailin vote is voided. Maybe both votes count. Maybe neither. Successful "cheat"? Maybe.
13
posted on
07/30/2020 11:36:18 AM PDT
by
ZOOKER
(Until further notice the /s is implied...)
To: Texas resident
Remember Bush V. Gore? The overseas ballots? I remember the law required that the ballots be postmarked on or before election day, so the 'Rats contested every overseas ballot without a postmark - even those received before election day. I don't remember if that was laughed out of court or if those ballots did end up being disqualified.
14
posted on
07/30/2020 11:41:52 AM PDT
by
KarlInOhio
(In 2016 Obama ended America's 220 year tradition of peaceful transfer of power after an election.)
To: SeekAndFind
I don’t have 3% of my mail go missing. Maybe they screwed something up. Been voting by mail for almost 20 years, it works.
15
posted on
07/30/2020 11:43:15 AM PDT
by
discostu
(Like a dog being shown a card trick)
To: shelterguy
And the ballots will be counted even if they have a Chines postmark and are all from Sum Ting Wong. ..or from Wees Kru Yu..
16
posted on
07/30/2020 11:47:10 AM PDT
by
Thommas
To: SeekAndFind
Your letter carrier knows your politics by the flyers they put in your mailbox. The postal employees union has a vested interest in getting more Democrats elected. How many ballots for politically active republicans would get “stuck” in the system until the fourth of November?
17
posted on
07/30/2020 11:48:40 AM PDT
by
jz638
To: chopperk
>IF BALLOTING IS DONE BY MAIL, PRESIDENT TRUMP LOSES.........
Not necessarily. We’ve seen the problem with Dem lack of enthusiasm in the CA25 special election. Rs showed up so strong that mail-ins couldn’t close the gap at ALL. R won by 10%.
18
posted on
07/30/2020 11:49:16 AM PDT
by
struggle
To: chopperk
The Post Officewill be warehousing ballots until the needed numbers are determined.
19
posted on
07/30/2020 11:51:39 AM PDT
by
cnsmom
To: SeekAndFind
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO...
20
posted on
07/30/2020 11:57:00 AM PDT
by
stars & stripes forever
(Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. (Psalm 32:12))
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