I wrote this up as part of a vanity post but wasn’t sure where to post it, having never made one of those before... this seems like a good place to post it instead...
They need to basically do a few things. All ballots are to be printed on special paper that only the federal government has - similar to currency paper. All ballots should have micro-printing on them so that they can be validated as true ballots. They do this sort of printing on checks. You can see it yourself with a magnifying glass. If your check uses that security feature, it will usually be done with the signature line, but it can be elsewhere in the check too. The ballots should all be watermarked, too. They are already numbered and given a UPC code. The idea here is that this set of things will mostly prevent fake ballots from being introduced into any election. This is definitely something I am willing to pay taxes for.
Fake ballots, election fraud should be investigated by the secret service much like counterfeiting is. Conviction of election fraud as an individual should carry a 10 year sentence. No getting off on technicalities. Appeal is fine and should follow established procedures. Conviction of election fraud on a large scale, essentially undermining the entire system our society is based upon (like what is going on now) should, upon conviction, carry a death penalty. Sorry if this makes you feel butt hurt. This has the potential to cause a civil war and the deaths of 10s or 100s of thousands of people. Someone who would be the cause of that, or make those sorts of decisions (*cough* Cuomo *cough*) needs to be removed from our society.
There should be ZERO electronic-only elections. ALWAYS have paper. As an IT person, I can tell you, hacking is still too easy. Have the scanners set so that they immediately reject any ballot that doesn’t conform to the above security measures. This will allow a normal voter to return to the start, get a good ballot, and begin again.
NO ballots should be destroyed for 10 years. Yes, it will take a bunch of storage. So what.
ALL ballots should be treated with a chain of custody that would stand up to court analysis. If the court would look at the chain of custody and say its invalid then the ballots are invalidated. Period. That chain of custody needs to start from the printing facility and be included all the way to the voter, including the poll worker and the poll counter. The ballot should be signed off at each step of its life. If the ballot is altered between any two points then there is a name associated with that that can be investigated. The person who holds the ballot should be witnessed in signing it off to the next group. Blank ballots can\should be bundled in some manner so that only a single sign-off is needed for 100s or thousands. IN their chain of custody.
You have to do a chain of custody for a drug test.. Seems like elections are more important than drug tests to me.
Thoughts? Additions? Re-reasoning?
I intend this as going forward measures, not a fix to the current catastrophe.
Good ideas and thoughts but consider refining a little to preserve the secret vote aspect of our elections. No one is allowed to know how another citizen voted.
Agree almost completely and think the taxpayer cost is worth every penny.
I would like to see a digital solution someday, if it ever can be secure.
I agree with everything else you posted but this provision is problematic.
Dems would simply and happily mess up the chain of custody of ballots in all red areas to get them invalidated. At their core they are cheaters and will look to exploit any loop hold they can find.
Another thing that has occurred to me is to embed RFID tags in the ballots so that they can be checked in and out quickly. This doesn’t convey what has been voted on the ballot, just the existence of it as it passes through areas of the voting system- you would have to install gates in these facilities to detect the RFID tags as they go through them. This is commonly used now for door locks to secure buildings (ever use a name badge against a detector on the wall to unlock a door? Thats an RFID tagged name badge.) and for logistics monitoring and inventory control in warehouses. RFID tags are tiny. You could easily put 100 of them in the space of a postage stamp, and they cost very very little. You could of course remove the tags but doing so would damage the ballot - torn out spot would be obvious. Burnt spot would be obvious. Getting the ballot wet would have no impact on the RFID tag. You can also set alarm systems so that when these tags are detected unexpectedly walking out the door the alarm goes off - you’ve probably experienced a form of this at stores like Best Buy with their gated doorways.