Election results in one district in North Carolina were not certified by the state board of elections due to irregularities regarding absentee ballots.
For the next election, be sure you know the rules for absentee ballot submission, and be suspicious if you find that an absentee ballot has been requested for you that you did not request.
It is legal in my state to collect SEALED absentee ballots to be delivered to elections boards. I’m not so sure it should be.
But this kind of (alleged) fraud can take place anyway, whether collecting sealed ballots is legal or not, because the fraud relies on naive, trusting voters who likely wouldn’t know the law and criminals who don’t obey the law.
We just used the included prepaid envelopes to mail our ballots in when we vote by mail. No idea what happens after that but I’m inclined to believe it all goes appropriately.
I brought son’s absentee ballot with us to Family Weekend and mailed it for him when we got back. On the day I voted, I could see the spot for his signature was stamped “absentee”. Seemed reassuring to me that they received his ballot, and if someone had done one for me, my name would have had the stamp by it.
It is way more complicated than just showing up with a box of votes at the Registrar. In my state each absentee ballot is numbered and coded. So when it gets counted the system shows it as counted so the person it is linked to can’t vote twice. The old fashioned notion of ballot box stuffing doesn’t happen in today’s elections where it is easier to keep track of ballots. In the North Carolina affidavits, the issue seems to be individuals collecting ballots and changing the votes or engaging in other mischief. Signing and sealing the absentee ballots and/or dropping them off yourself will protect yourself from that. ucbalumnus is right - you should guard your ballot closely.
The other pro tip is to re-register if you have not registered in a long time or if your signature has changed for another reason. Absentee ballots will be rejected if signatures don’t match. But signatures do change over time due to age or physical changes so you need to keep yours updated. In my state (CA) you can go online after the election to confirm whether your ballot was counted or not.
With all the shenanigans about absentee ballots being rejected in the last election, I will not be voting that way unless I absolutely have to, and only if I can “track” my vote somehow and verify that it was counted.
When I voted (in person), on the list of registered voters with the signature spaces, many were marked as “by mail”. This apparently means that if such a voter shows up at the polling place, s/he needs to bring in his/her mail ballot to turn it in, not that it has already been received by the election office.
I’ve helped a neighbor absentee vote on Election Day when she was ill. Picked up her ballot, took it to her place, and returned it. I think I went to a county office, hard to remember now. There is certainly a balance between giving voting access (which I very much support) and controlling for fraud. I do think it is important for states to have an absentee process for people who travel, temporarily live out of state, are working a long shift on Election Day, or are ill.
Like the rest of election activities, I really wish there were federal guidelines requiring best practices to ensure broad access and secure voting. We could do this if we wanted to.
@greenwitch EVERYONE in my new state votes entirely by what for all purposes is an absentee ballot. We vote by mail. No postage required. There are also boxes around the city specially for ballots (look kind of like small white dumpsters with a slot you can drop your envelope into if you don’t want to mail it). You can check online if your ballot was sent to you, received back, signature verified, and counted. Almost 80% of the state population votes. Once I finished mourning my sticker and joining my neighbors at the polls, I’ve come around to really liking it. There are a lot of advantages.
In my state of California about 60% of the vote is by absentee ballot. Many people are, like me, registered as permanent absentees, which means we automatically get our ballots mailed to us. Other people request an absentee ballot for a particular election, which anyone can do without having to specify a reason.
If I, an absentee voter, go to the polls on Election Day, my name is not listed on the voting rolls, because I already have an absentee ballot. If I still haven’t mailed my ballot, I can bring it to my polling place on Election Day and deposit it in a separate ballot box for absentee votes. I can also mail in my ballot (it has to be postmarked by Election Day and received by the Friday after Election Day), or drop it in one of the special ballot boxes around the county.
If I mess up my ballot, I can bring it to the polls and hand it in for a new one. If I lose my ballot, I can vote provisionally on Election Day. My ballot will be checked, and if the absentee ballot I was sent was not returned (that is, if I didn’t vote that absentee ballot) then my provisional vote will count.
Absentee voters can check online whether their vote has been received and whether it was counted. This election, I dropped off my ballot in a local ballot box late on the Sunday before Election Day. On Election Day, I checked whether it had been marked Received. Annoyingly, it was not, although I was pretty sure the county had it among the hundreds of thousands of other ballots. I considered going to my polling place and voting provisionally, as was my right, but I figured my ballot would turn up. Sure enough, it was marked Received and Counted two days after Election Day.
Our vote-by-mail packages included a sticker. And you can still go on election day to meet your neighbors if you want to (and if they want to) but there are very few lines now because hardly anyone does it that way.
Almost everyone in Colorado votes by mail, but you can go to voting ‘centers’ in Oct/Nov to do all kinds of things - get a new ballot, register, change voter info/districts, etc. You can mail the ballots back, but it will cost you $.71 cents. There are voter boxes all over cities at convenient places like rec centers or bus/rail stations. You can vote, change your mind, and ‘recall’ your ballot and start again. You can send in the ballot and check that it was received and accepted online. I even received an email that my ballot was accepted a few days before ‘election day’ I think because I originally registered online.
You (anyone) can collect up to 10 ballots and turn them in. Not sure if it is 10 per day or 10 total, as that wasn’t clear. That allows you to collect for your family and do a favor for a friend, but not go door to door collecting them.
I really think the state has done everything it can to make voting easy. Why can’t Florida do it?
Yeah, but when EVERYONE votes by mail over a few week period, it seems a little weird to wear your sticker around. So we don’t get one. And I’ve made my peace with that.
If I lived in CA, I think I’d ALWAYS want the absentee ballot because you guys have so many ballot initiatives. We don’t have as many as you do, but I still really like having the time at my kitchen table to review the ballot in conjunction with the mailings we get with info on the candidates and initiatives, and the ability to Google as I contemplate the ballot. I usually take more than one sitting to fill it out. It is less rushed and pressured than when I used to go to the polls. Even when I prepped ahead and printed my sample ballot then, occasionally I’d miss something and then leave it blank because I couldn’t really research on the spot with everyone lined up waiting for a booth.
One thing I have mixed feelings about is the signature discussion. Young people barely learn cursive now, and I think they sign their names less often than we older folks did. Their signatures are more variable and less consistent. It gives an easy excuse to pitch their ballots in states that look at that. I’d like to see some research on this – how often are ballots pitched due to signature mismatches, what are the ages and education levels of those whose ballots aren’t counted for that specific reason, etc. Maybe 100 years from now it will be all biometrics.
In California, an absentee ballot is only counted if it is the ballot issued to that voter after the voter requested it (either for this election or as a permanent absentee) and if the voter signs it and dates it. So someone can show up with a box of absentee ballots, but those ballots have to have been obtained from voters and signed, either by the voters or by a fraudster forging voters’ signatures.
Voters in California who do not use absentee ballot get sample ballots in the mail that look just like the real ones (but printed on newsprint instead of thicker ballot paper and bound in a booklet). These arrive a few weeks before election day, so that voters can take their time deciding what to vote for, and mark their selections in the sample ballots. Then the voter just brings the marked sample ballot to the polling place and copies his/her selections onto the real ballot.
Yes, signature inconsistency means that if signature comparison is being done by a non-expert on the subject, the chance of error (either rejecting a valid ballot or accepting a stolen ballot with a forged signature) can be high, and there is potential for intentional shenanigans (like applying a stricter signature match standard on ballots from areas where most voters are of the opposing party).
When you buy something with your credit card, they don’t check the signature before approving the purchase (or at any time after unless there is an issue of fraud raised). I’m not sure that the signature validation of ballots buys anything for anyone.
At least in California, they DO check the signature, and sometimes reject ballots. I’m just not sure they’re any good at distinguish real signatures from fraudulent ones.
I had no idea that ballots were rejected because of signatures before this last election. My “official” signature is on my driver’s license, but I was never told while signing it that it would be used for anything else or stored by the state. It’s horrible chicken scratch, since it was done with a skippy little electronic pen. They should at least inform people!
So we don’t get one. And I’ve made my peace with that.