Mailing it in

There is one thing that MAGA-hat wearers, Never Trumpers, and the Progressive resistance agree upon: everything–and I mean EVERYTHING– revolves around President Trump. Nothing better represents this delusional state of affairs than the debate over mail-in voting. To wit:

Supporters of the President are sounding the alarm that rampant fraud will accompany mail-in voting. President Trump himself has stated he opposes liberalizing mail-in voting because he believes it will only favor the Democratic Party; some Progressives apparently agree and have seized upon the pandemic quarantine as a reason to support only mail-in voting. For the record, there is no data that mail-in voting favors either party, and little evidence of widespread mail-in voting fraud. Perhaps your own view about mail-in voting is driven by these same factors. Please permit me to explain why it’s wrong to do so.

First, mail-in voting is a necessity: not everyone can make it to a polling place on election day. As an expat, mail-in voting is the only way I can participate. However, mail-in voting is an exception, not the norm. Why? While all voting methods are vulnerable to fraud, mail-in voting is more vulnerable (I’ll explain why below). Thus when the number of mail-in voters is small (as an exception), the risk of fraud changing the election results is also small, so mail-in voting poses an acceptable risk.

Second, mail-in voting poses a vulnerability even if there is no evidence of fraud. Several states use only mail-in voting, and cite their success as proof there is no issue here. However, who is interested in interfering in the state elections of Washington, Oregon, or Colorado (places relying on mail-in voting)? There are several nations (e.g., Russia and China) capable of and interested in influencing, undermining, or corrupting US federal elections. Moving to large-scale, mail-in voting changes the calculus for such nations and thus the vulnerability becomes a real threat.

Third, while the 2020 election is a federal one, everyone should know that it is run as fifty distinct state elections, with different rules in each case. Asking states to make sudden changes within months of an election, while their employees are furloughed or working from home, is a recipe for disaster, especially when both political parties are primed to cry “foul” at any suspicious instance. Wisconsin conducted an in-person election in the teeth of the pandemic and had outrageous, unfounded claims of vote tampering by both sides. States would find it difficult to make big changes now, and errors they make would only compound the confusion.

Fourth, massive mail-in voting results in a much greater time lag between election day and when the results are announced. In some cases in the past, mail-in votes weren’t even counted if their total was less than the difference between candidates established by in-person voting (i.e., the outcome could not change). If the mail-in vote total is large, all must be counted, and each mail-in vote requires additional scrutiny and verification.

Fifth, that verification process is also a point of dispute. Anyone old enough to remember the “hanging-chads” debacle in Florida in 2000 knows that the authentication of votes is subjective. Imagine the public debates, protests and the like as days lead into weeks after the election without a final result (and with constant leaks and charges of corruption)!

Sixth, current security for mail-in voting is adequate for optional, small-scale use, but not for widespread use. Every state is different, but let me use my voting experience in Ohio as a example. I am currently registered to vote there, a process that required only a government ID and a banking document with an Ohio address. I mailed in my federal postcard application for a ballot: it contained nothing more than part of my social security number and signature. I opted for an e-mail ballot, which I will fill out and e-mail back to Ohio with my signature. So the security involved is (1) my social security number, (2) my signature, (3) any government issued ID, and (4) some paper documents with my Ohio address. Let’s look at those in turn:

• Throw out number four (documents with an address), as any nitwit could have forged and printed those out.
• Social security numbers were commonly (and wrongly) used for identification, so the many data breaches out there mean it is likely your SSN has been compromised.
• Signatures? More difficult to find, but easy to copy/forge once found.
• Government ID? An American passport is incredibly secure, but your state driver’s license not so much. Yet both count.

The bottom line here is it’s not easy for you to pretend to be me and vote in Ohio, but it’s also not impossible. The real problem is not you or me, but . . .

Russia. Seventh, what may be difficult for you is easy for Russia. Or China. Or even North Korea. Remember when the Chinese hacked the US Office of Personnel Management database and made off with the Personal Identifying Information of hundreds of thousands of federal employees? What about the routine credit card data breaches; all that data is available on the dark web for pennies. When Russia was hacking into state voting systems before the 2016 election, they often accessed voter registration rolls. Those could not change votes, but they would provide the Russians with the means to affect future elections. All a foreign actor needs to do is submit the same federal postcard I used and have the absentee ballot sent to a different e-mail or physical address. Whether they may or may not have the ability to forge a signature, they could submit a vote, meaning some voters showing up at the polls would be told they had already voted, and some mail-in voters would have two ballots submitted. All this could be sorted out in time, but at what cost to the credibility of the election process?

Finally, remember that the motivation for a foreign actor need not be changing votes. As the Intelligence Community pointed out in the 2016 report on Russian interference, Russia sought to “undermine public faith in the US democratic process.” The partisan divide in the United States has made this Russian operation one of the highest pay-off influence operations in history. Intelligence officers will be studying that one for decades. And the last straw would be a drawn out, contested, post-election series of public political and legal battles as states deal with a backlog of mail-in votes.

And I won’t even go into the challenge to the US Postal Service. I know you will breathlessly await my review of the USPS in a future blog post (if you’re still in quarantine and desperately bored).

What about the risk of contracting the coronavirus while voting in-person? This is indeed a quandry. I support allowing those who are at risk (e.g., aged, suffering comorbidities, immunocompromised) to get a doctor’s note and vote by mail. But for the vast majority of voters, there is nothing especially dangerous about in-person voting, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci. People gather and stand in lines for all kinds of reasons during the quarantine. And we make some people (grocery store employees, truck drivers) work despite the dangers because what they do is essential. So is voting.

I continue to support mail-in voting, as an exception, not the norm. I contend it could be expanded and secured, but not quickly or painlessly. Voting is so important, and in-person voting has many advantages in terms of preventing fraud. Please consider this issue with the seriousness it deserves, not as yet another simple Trump-driven dynamic.