Are mail-in ballots actually safe from being tampered with?

There is a website for people in this state to request a ballot. The website supposedly tracks your ballot through the process. Tells you a ballot is requested, that it has been sent to you... and then weather on not the completed ballot was returned.

I live in a rural area. Here we are to mail our completed ballots to a residence of a woman who lives in this area. I went online to request a ballot for the upcoming election.
According to the website, my last mail in ballot was never received/recorded.

Was it lost in the mail? Don't know....but what about the local woman to whom all the mail-in's
are sent to? I live in a area where Trump signs are the most popular yard decorations.
What's to prevent this woman from tearing up my ballot?

 

I mail mine to the COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS?? You should have something similar in your county??

 

I will look. Thanks

 

I have NEVER heard of such a thing. Do you not have a County seat in your town (or connected to a nearby town)? I went to vote.org and the drop down menu lists every county in my area from which to choose.

 

Thanks for your input. It doesn't really make much sense to me either. My wife and I both mailed our ballots to this woman the same day.
Hers at least was received.

 

You're welcome. That just sounds so bizarre. Do you know who she is? Does she have some kind of official capacity in your town?

 

Our county Bucks County Pa. has the County Board of Elections right in our county courthouse.The Envelopes required to vote in our elections and the ballot come directly from them to my house. It is an envelope within envelope system where you complete your ballot with whom you are voting for put it in an envelope seal it and complete filling out required signature and other security id on the preprinted areas of the envelope,that envelope is then inserted into the envelope which is sealed and mailed to the board of elections.

 

Are mail-in ballots actually safe from being tampered with? No. Once you vote in person, your hand should be the last to touch it before it is counted. A mailed ballot is not secured in any way and could be tampered in many different ways en route to it's destination. Your personal data could be extracted, altered and added to a new ballot with your vote changed and your original ballot destroyed and you would never know. There's nothing that's bullet proof but mail in votes are absolutely the most vulnerable. That is why voting in person with a voter ID should be mandate. The vote is sacred and should treated as such no matter which way you vote.

 

Really???When you vote in a voting machine you have absolutely NO IDEA if your votes were actually registered for the person you voted for or if in fact any of the votes from your polling site will ever reach the counting station. There are always tails of complete precinct votes being misplaced or never turned in. All you really know is you pulled the lever to supposedly register your votes. We live in a country that uses antiquated early 20th century voting equipment in an era when real business operates on cbomputers as our elections should. We should long ago COMPUTERIZED OUR ENTIRE ELECTION PROCESS. We should be voting either on PC's or Smart Phones to a constantly updating computer program the minute the last vote is cast we should know who won the popular vote and by exactly how many votes.

 

Last year, I had to complete a form for a governmental agency. It was about two pages long. I did and mailed it in. No biggie. A guy called me to go over my information and, I kid you not, it took him ONE HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTES to actually type my answers on his computer. I thought it was some kind of prank so I went to my computer and looked up his name while on the phone. He was a legit employee with the agency he claimed to work for. His salary was $93,700. The man sounded like he had never touched a computer even accidentally in his entire life. I cannot begin to imagine the chaos that would ensure if these people had to handle a whole election.

Thanks for the laugh!

 

A very well written computer program running in tandem on two separate computers simultaneously, in case one went down with no human intervention other than the input of the voters and you have instant end of election time voting results. Each state would have its own region within the program with it's own unique access code to bring up and down the particular states voting hours each state and county could have their own voter totals in addition to the overall national totals. A well written well designed program could pretty much guarantee an honest election.... and that is why we have never chosen to modernize our antiquated voting. IT IS FAR TOO EASY FOR THEM TO FIX THE CURRENT SYSTEM... BY FIX I MEAN CHEAT!!!!

 

The woman's official title is "Town Clerk". The problem is, as previously mentioned by someone else here,
that the ballot comes with a return envelope which has official information on it.
That return envelope is addressed directly back to the woman's residence.
So I'm not really sure I can send it any other place to be counted.

 

In that situation, I would want some real answers. I would call the County for wherever you live and ask about this. It might be legitimate but somebody in authority would have to verify that for me to feel confident with it.

 

I'm still shaking my head on this one.

Does she usually conduct business as Town Clerk in an office somewhere?

Does she work from home or is she at home due to COVID-19?

I don't understand why they would have the official envelopes printed to her address. Surely, they can drop off ballots or she can pick them up if this is due to COVID-19. That would make it less suspicious for me, but I would still have to verify with some kind of manager in the County office.

 

Amen.

I think that would/should solidify someone's decision to vote in person.

I've voted early and in person for maybe 8 out of the last 10 elections. The other two I voted the day of, but early is easiest, it's the library 5 minutes away, if I see a line I keep driving and try again later. Never waited more than 5 minutes that way.

 

I would expect that two or more people would be required to be present before they open the envelopes.

 

Like all the other well written programs in our government, right??? Who oversees these programs and what is their political views??? There's no such thing as a well written, well designed program, if there was, there would be a lot of programmers and analysts out of work. A program such as you suggest would be huge, require many developers and generate many thousands of lines of code just to lay it out. Then it would need to be pared down and refined and after that constantly maintained. The only way that would make sense would be if you could get all 50 states to agree to a single program that was administered by a single entity and highly secured. Never gonna happen and it's not just the technology it's the politics, the intrigues and suspicions and the extreme division in America.

 

Guys we all know why democrats want mail in voting so bad. there is no point to try to explain the logic of how easy those votes are to mess with. Unfortunately for us republicans, we have this thing called morals and wouldn't tamper with votes, but democrats? that's another story.
It has been PROVEN how mail in votes can be tampered with and someone even did it on purpose to prove it. I have posted that story in another thread and can probably find it again pretty easily, but it would be pointless.

 

This is more common than you would think and very common in small towns. It's hard to believe it's the 21st century sometimes. A town I lived in back in the eighties had an antiquated phone system. All calls in that town had to be routed through an operator and the switchboard was in her house. She was elderly and you couldn't place a call after 7pm because that was her bedtime. Sometimes you knew she was listening to your conversation because you could hear her TV in the background. Any call outside of town was long distance, the town line was at the edge of my property so to call my next door neighbor was long distance. When the operator passed away we eventually got regular service but still had to use a rotary phone. Small town voting is still a lot like that.

 

Thanks for sharing that. I'm from Chicago and lived near Raleigh for about 7 years. I have visited small towns but couldn't fathom taking a step back into Mayberry in this day and age. LOL I say that in jest and not to hurt anyone's feelings.

 

I love Chicago, to me it's the Paris of the US not NYC but since that violent episode in the Magnificent Mile a few years back I haven't been back. Friends there have said it's gotten worse. So sad. Was there ever a more beautiful, magical city anywhere like Chicago? I've lived all over the place but really love small town New England and will probably die here. Of course if I were to win the lottery and could afford multiple homes a high rise on Lakeshore would be nice. I don't know if we'll ever secure the vote or overcome all of the division.

 

It is a beautiful place. I lived in the Raleigh area for about seven years and people would always ask me "Are there Al Capones on every street corner?". No joke. It's not the perfect place but it's hardly the crime-ridden, days of old shoot-em-ups either. I almost starved in Raleigh. LOL I am way too spoiled to Chicago food (the absolute best!). I even had to dust off the apron and learn how to make some of my favorites while in N.C.

I've never been up that way except a layover flight through NY. Didn't really have time to see outside the airport. Like you, a huge lottery win would change my housing options quickly. Lake Shore Drive is amazing. It was a treat to go down there and see all the holiday decorations when we were kids. It would be completely ideal if they could figure out the traffic situation.

Given the increase in domestic violence calls since the SIP, I'd say we have a LOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNGGGGG way to go to overcome all the division. Sad, really. Most people are good and all are trying to do the right thing. Little differences shouldn't get in the way of opening up those dialogues for a chance at healing. Sigh.

 

There is little evidence of tampering. To effect a national election, the coordination of and body of persons required to effect is rather staggering, when the rubber hits the road.

No, the likelihood, and evidence produced, thus far, is that the spoilage count will be high.

However, it is deemed that the increased participation mail in balloting will afford, despite the spoilage, will more than offset the shrinking of the count from physical polling places, not to mention the dangers of covid that lurks.

 

Can't say how bad it could be- but it does seem to offer the window of opportunity.
Four people arrested for getting signatures from homeless in exchange for cash and cigarettes....
https://www.foxnews.com/us/4-la-men-admit-to-skid-row-voter-fraud-scheme-da-announces

 

You'll always find isolated instances, but the level of coordination, huge number of conspirators, etc., required to affect a national election is highly unlikely and there is no evidence of it, in the many millions of absentee ballots which have been cast over the years.