mail in voting

 

I recently responded to someone’s post about 10 reasons to love mail in voting. I confess that the points listed were so absurd that I thought the post was a satire and I responded in kind only to discover that some people actually believe mail in voting was is the safest most secure way to hold and election and that anyone who opposes universal mail in voting WANTS Vladimir Putin to control the election because he apparently can sit in Moscow and control all in person voting machines like a video game console.

Sometimes it’s a challenge to argue common sense because when someone dismisses the obvious and argues from a standpoint of alternative reason how do you use logical arguments to counter?

How do you convince someone who believes sending a mail in ballot to everyone on the voter rolls guarantees that every person and only that person is assured of getting and returning that ballot? Do you point out that most states not only do not have clean voter rolls but have been blocked by mostly left wing activists from cleaning those rolls: people who have moved away still get ballots in the mail people who die still get ballots in the mail someone can fill those out and return them? There have been cases of ballots being taken from and filled out for residents of nursing homes and assisted care facilities and usually this is not done by agents of the Kremlin.

What do you say to someone who says lost or misdirected ballots is a non-issue because he says he has never sent or expected a package that was lost in the mail? The efficiency of the USPS aside this guy is either the luckiest guy ever or lives in fantasy land (or is telling a convenient fib). This is the guy who when you ask, “would you send large sums of cash by mail?” responds with “people send checks all the time”. it is difficult to debate across different planes of reality.

How do you answer when someone says in person voting is more susceptible to fraud than any other?  You walk in to the polls, in sane states show your ID than are handed a ballot or taken to a touchscreen you vote then you leave, the voting machines are never left unattended and the election officials inspect and verify each machine’s accuracy. Of course fraud is possible but in order to defraud the election someone has to have physical access to the machines. The ballots or counting cartridges have a chain of custody and in event of a challenge there is a backup copy, either in the form of ballots or paper printouts. Fraud is possible (Barak Obama’s margin of victory in some Philadelphia precincts exceeded the number of registered voters)  but the decentralized nature of the electoral process minimizes the damage a corrupt official can do. In fact widespread fraud is only obtainable in areas where one party rule has been in place for some time. When someone argues that voting by mail not only adequately replaces but even strengthens those safeguards despite the complete lack of verifiable custody chains from the time the ballot is mailed until it is returned?

How do you reason with someone who thinks Vladimir Putin has a button on his desk to control the US vote, even though even the vaunted Mueller investigation doesn’t allege that one vote was changed. Mueller’s gripe was that the Russians interfered by buying Face book ads not hacking voting machines. Voting machines are not networked and are not connected to the internet. One needs physical access to change the votes. I suppose that in the fictional USA of the left there may be millions of Manchurian Candidates that work as local election officials who at a phone call with a secret Russian phrase can spring into action and alter the votes in dozens of machines while the other folks take a coffee break, whose minds were programmed decades ago to vote Trump, but in the real world it’s not very likely.