this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
896 points (98.3% liked)

politics

19080 readers
5356 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

EDIT: See @AnimePhantasm comment below! My friend called the election board and they confirmed what @AnimePhantasm and @fmstrat commented! This was Virginia reusing last year’s envelopes.

OP I am an absentee voter in Blacksburg just next door. Shine a light on the blacked out part. I am 99% sure this is legit, they just crossed out the witness requirement. I can see the word witness under the sharpie in your picture. Virgina doesnt have to do that witness thing anymore. We did at the last general election, so I am guessing they just reused the same envelopes. You should call and ask your elections office before alerting the news. They are hardworking folks whose jobs are already 100 times harder then they used to be. Stirring up reports of election fraud where it isn't happening makes us just as bad as them.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] FlowVoid 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

You sign the envelope that contains the ballot. That way, an election worker can compare the signature on the envelope to your signature on file.

This is how they make sure that someone didn't steal the ballot from your mailbox and fill it out for you.

Once the signature is verified, the envelope is opened and the anonymous ballot inside is removed and stored with all the others. When they are counted, there will be no way to tell who filled out each ballot.

[–] mkwt 6 points 1 month ago

When I did absentee voting, the voter signature and voter id information were on a perforated slip attached to the outside of the envelope.

That way, the process is something like:

  1. Look at the slip. Verify voter signature, eligibility to vote, and mark as having voted in the voter rolls.
  2. Detach perforated slip from sealed envelope. Sealed envelope now contains no identifying information. (This envelope was mailed inside an outer mailing envelope.)
  3. Entire sealed envelope and contents thereof goes into big bin of accepted ballots.
  4. Later, election workers open the sealed envelopes from the bin and run the actual ballot papers through the scantron machine.
[–] Tarquinn2049 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And yet the "scary machines" are too easy to tamper with... they are scared of them because of how hard it would be to get away with tampering with them. And they know their supporters and others in government don't know any better and will jump on the bandwagon of the machines being vaguely scary.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

As I understand it, a fairly bulletproof method is to vote using a machine that prints out a human readable card with a punch through the candidates you voted for. So you can confirm the machine understood the options you tapped and then drop the paper ballot into a secure box, which can be used as a backup for manual recounts.

Anybody know if this is what the experts [still] want?

[–] Tarquinn2049 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Honestly, while it would certainly help sell it to less technical people. There is no need for a paper copy to make it impossible to get away with tampering with digital voting, building in safeguards entirely digitally is actually enough.

But yes, most commonly recommended option is to have the machines do a quick result, and then paper to verify.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Right on.

Found an article from four years ago that I must’ve read by the way - maybe you already know all about it:

Why experts are overwhelmingly skeptical of online voting

[–] Tarquinn2049 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah, it can't be done online, which is why the physical machines are the focus. They can be incredibly tamper resistant, but more importantly, impossible to get away with tampering with them.