How To Steal An Election

 

Over at The Conservative Treehouse a few days back, somebody posted a suggestion about how an election could be stolen, and I've been thinking about that from a systems standpoint. 

The way elections are run in Florida, to get a mail-in ballot, the voter must initially request a mail-in ballot.  Thereafter, all that's required is a check mark on the mailed-in ballot that asks to continue in that mode.  This year, I fudged my ballot — by using blue ink instead of black — and had to go vote in person.  At the polling place, I surrendered my mail-in packet in trade for a fresh ballot for my precinct after displaying both my voter registration card and my driver's license, filled it out, and then I fed it into the ballot-reading machine under the watchful eye of a poll worker.

Republicans won every statewide election, some by very wide margins.  Ron DeSantis beat Charlie Crist by 1.5 million votes, and that was known within an hour of the polls closing.

In Arizona, with a fraction of Florida's population, Democrat Katie Hobbs beat Republican Kari Lake by a few thousand votes after a full week of counting.  Maricopa County, with 83% Republican registration, split 50-50.  Unbelievable... literally.

So, if Secretary of State Katie Hobbs wanted to steal that election, how might she go about it? 

First, some assumptions:  every voter has a voter-id number.  It's on my voter registration card, and when my mail-in ballot arrived, the return envelope was bar-coded with my number.  I have to presume every state does something similar.  This enables the scanning equipment to know that this ballot came from a registered voter, and the state database can be marked to indicate "this voter-id voted by mail".  Presumably, when one votes in person, the poll worker inputs the number shown on the voter registration card and the equipment marks the state database to indicate "this voter-id voted in person".  The state database thus knows — in real time — which voter-ids have already been used, and which voter-ids have not been used, and can thus prevent any voter-id being used more than once.

Second, there may be registered voters who do not realize that they are registered voters.  This is the result of so-called "motor voter" laws whereby one can be quietly and involuntarily registered to vote because of some innocuous interaction with the state:  getting a driver license, opening a business, applying for a homestead exemption...  In some states, this can happen even if one is not a citizen — and thus ineligible to vote at all.  None of those newly-minted voter-ids are associated with either
(a) a photo id, or
(b) a signature.

Third, while the return envelope is marked to indicate my voter-id number, the ballot is not.  The ballot is identical for all voters in a given precinct.  There is nothing to indicate who cast this ballot.

Putting these facts together, we see that the state database not only knows who voted and who has not, but it can produce a roster of non-voters by precinct.  If you intend to steal an election, that's critical information.  With a roster of non-voters and a printer, you can print however many ballots are needed to make up the difference between the current winner and your preferred candidate.  All you need after that is a crew of ballot-markers who are given a list of voter-ids that have not yet cast a ballot, a stack of unmarked ballots, and time to produce the needed votes.  The ballot-markers fill in the appropriate spots on the ballot, and tell the state database "this voter-id voted".

As far as anyone can tell, all of those manufactured votes are legitimate.  Proof of wrongdoing simply does not exist, so there is no way to "prove the election was stolen".  It's the perfect crime.

How can this be prevented?  Certain pathways must be blocked to prevent their use. 

• mail-in ballots must be explicitly requested. 

  Sending ballots unsolicited must be forbidden.

• Voter registration must be limited to real persons who present proof of their identity. 

  This is why Democrats fight so hard against so-called "voter suppression" laws.

• Culling of voter rolls must be an ongoing process. 

  Voters who fail to vote in two consecutive elections must be culled from the registration lists.

• All ballots must be in the hands of the poll workers within some short time after the polls close. 

  Allowing days or weeks to pass, and allowing sudden discoveries of previously unknown stacks of ballots is exactly the thing that allows that perfect crime of stealing an election.  The critical ingredient is 'time'.  Whenever voting results are delayed, the outcome is a narrow victory, usually by a Democrat.  Same-day voting results are often characterized by huge margins of victory, often by Republicans.

All of these measures will be fought tooth-and-claw not because "they suppress voter turnout", but because they make it difficult or impossible to steal an election.  If you want to see honest elections going forward (and who doesn't?), we must get control of the process.  Failure to do that is the greatest threat to our democracy.