How mail in votes are counted

Piggy backing on the thread by @Sleep Monster about how mail-in voting works, I would like to expand to explain how mail in votes are handled.

Some time ago I had the opportunity to meet the Supervisor of Elections of my county at a business meeting. Guess what we spoke about... Elections! I asked her how counting works. As I understood it, this is how it works.

First, a voter receives sort of a "voting kit" in the mail. This includes the ballot, a secrecy sleeve, and two envelopes: one with the voter information, the other is the mailing envelope. So you fill in the ballot, place the ballot inside a secrecy sleeve, that goes into the first envelope that has your name, address, ... and a bar code. You place the ballot and secrecy sleeve in that envelope, close it, print your name, sign it and date it. And that goes into the mailing envelope you send.

Election officials open the mailing envelope, and put the closed internal envelope (the one with the signature and bar code) in a machine that scans the envelope information and pairs the bar code with the voter roll. Another official sits at that machine, looks at the image and checks that signature against the one on the voter roll. If they don't match (or any other problem), they are rejected and the voter receives notification so they can correct the problem. If they match, the digital image of the envelope is saved and the ballot in the secrecy sleeve is passed to continue the process. Other election officials take the ballots out of the secrecy sleeve, and place them in the machine on November 3, so they can get counted after the polls close. When the polls close, the machine counts the votes and saves a digital image of each vote. The ballots themselves are stored for up to 22 months but are not touched again. Election workers count the votes again from the images to check the results by the machine. And take note of write-in candidates (even if the write-in candidate is Donald Duck... which often happens). The results are certified, and all those images become part of the public record.

None of these machines are connected to the Internet or to any network so they can't get hacked.

But, at that point, anybody can check either the digital image of the ballots, or the digital image of the signed envelopes compared to the voter roll signatures. Also the database of who has voted is public record. So volunteer groups form both parties check who voted, and double check them against anything they want. Like travel records (if the voter was in Florida when the vote was mailed), death records, records of other states, in-person voting records ... or anything they want to check.

Why doesn't the county do this? Because there are so few cases in the whole state, that it's not worth it. The likelihood of them finding one in our county is close to zero. And this is confirmed by the volunteer groups who do the checking.

Discrepancies that might involve fraud are passed to authorities. Like double voting, or dead people voting, or non-citizens, ... and so on.

It's clear that mail-in voting is at least as secure, and maybe more secure than in-person voting.

It's obvious that Trump feels he will lose the elections. So he wants to cast aspersions on mail-in voting to try to get his base to... I don't know what.... keep in power somehow?

 

Not how it works in the Old Dominion. It is one of if not the only states that allows ballots to be counted as they come in before election day.

 

LOL! Not even close.

 

How can you possibly justify that statement?

 

Yes and so routinely in certain precincts in Philadelphia more votes are cast than the number of register voters by 20 to 30 percent. And if you really think there doing much more than sticking them in the machine your dreaming. They are supposed to routinely purge the rolls. They do not in many big cities. Please note that the fact most state and cities, by a very wide margin refused point blank to cooperate in the National voter fraud investigation should tell you everything you need to know. If they've nothing to hide why are they so diligent in hiding it.

 

Not how it works in NC either.

By the way, how many more machines would you need to accommodate the roughly 20x the number of mail in votes than the last election cycle.

Furthermore how many more people trained in handwriting verification will you need to verify the MILLIONS of more ballots? And how much more time will they have to do so?

 

Earlier, you talked about how your voting machines were hacked. Why would these machines be any less vulnerable to hacking than the voting machines themselves?

 

Also, let’s assume we had someone who was unscrupulous and was not concerned about going back to prison.

What exactly stops him from going around and paying a bunch of homeless people for their info and copy of their signatures and having the homeless peoples ballots sent to him and filling them out for them and sending them in?

 

According to county statistics, we have about 1,000 homeless in a metro area of 500,000. I seriously doubt anyone could succeed at getting 1,000 ballots sent to a residential address without sounding an alarm. Furthermore, how many of those 1,000 are registered to vote? How many are not felons who have lost their voting rights? There is the matter of time, and the likelihood that someone within the homeless community is a solid citizen and will report you. You may encounter competition from another criminal working for the other side. There are many factors working against such a plot.

 

What is your magic number where fraudulent voting is significant?

 

I don't have a magic number, but it would be the legitimate margin of victory plus one vote.

I was replying to a post suggesting a plot involving homeless people.

 

You replied that it is a legitimate margin of victory plus one vote. How do you know that number before the election? It could be a one vote margin or it could be a million votes.

 

We don't. What is your point, kriman?

 

You discounted a thousand possible fraudulent votes. How many possible fraudulent votes does it take to make you concerned?

 

I didn't discount anything. I expanded on the idea of paying homeless people for their ballots.

 

But you appeared to be discounting them as making a significant difference. Otherwise I see no point to your post.

 

You misunderstood. I was replying to a question asking what could stop a criminal from paying homeless people for ballots. I listed many things that would interfere with such an operation, with one being the time and effort necessary to track down and coax 1,000 people into selling you their ballots. I'm not discounting anything. I gave the population of my area for reference.

 

When you win as Trump did COUNTY's that lower fraudulent number becomes a larger factor state wide, correct?

 

Just because you could not get a thousand does not mean you could not get a significant number.

 

Okay? I think you misread my reply, kriman.

 

How many out of that 1000 could they coax?

 

Who cares? It won't work. Try it yourself. If you do, the magic number you should concern yourself with is the number of ballots that get put into your mailbox before an alarm bell goes off. How many do you think that would be? Five? Ten? A hundred? You'll get caught.

 

If I throw a bunch of ballots into a mailbox, they will go to the post office and no one will know that they came out of one mailbox. Not only that, I could throw them into as many mailboxes as I want.
You are throwing up a lot of numbers, but none which indicate at which point you would be concerned.

 

Please read the post I was responding to. It involved paying homeless people for their info and having the ballots mailed to him. Here:

What exactly stops him from going around and paying a bunch of homeless people for their info and copy of their signatures and having the homeless peoples ballots sent to him...

 

And what stops him from doing that?