Good post, providing some of the details of background history on voting and balloting procedures that I did not know or realize was so extensive. I fully agree with your intro comment, as one of those statements that are so obivous we tend to forget that they should be stated or restated prominently and frequently to ensure their acceptance:
"We need to acknowledge that there is a clear trade-off between: * Convenience in voting and * Security within the voting process." [Thomas Sowell's insight on tradeoffs, again!! :-) ]
The companion comment you make later also falls into that "oh so obvious" category it deserves equal emphasis: "Almost impossible to prove that fraud occurred immediately after an election takes place." Or in the weeks up to final certification of the election results.
I also endorse your position on Federalism.
I do have a couple of places needing clarification of your details, or potential (hopefully minor) objections and will try to separate them into distinct replies
Last item: Voting Day item 9: "Paper ballots must be stored for at least six months in a secure location." Given the sensitivity of election results and the reprocussions if something illegal or fraudulent was found, and the long time it can take for court cases to be mounted and completed, would you be adverse to extending that time to 18 or 24 months? Longer with a court order?
Overall, again, a great post, and I fully accept all of the other ideas you mentioned that I did not ask about. :-)
Voting Day item 3 and following: "Every paper ballot must have a unique scannable code attached to it." This is a great idea and some venues probably do this already?
Do you want to institute this "chain of custody" practice only starting with election day [or early week] as ballots are handed to voters, or start with the capture of ballot status coming from the print shop?
On item 4c: "Candidates voted for each office." Maybe I don't understand this properly. I presume you are also wanting to keep the ID of the voter and the ID of the ballot separate so his/her voting selection cannot be tied back to said voter once they enter the booth or deposit their ballot? The metadata shows the set of candidates legitimately to be selected among for that election/ precinct, etc.; and not the candidates the voter selected for each legitimately available position?
And then overall, the collection of ballot IDs shows that the # of voters and ballots match, etc., and that no additions or deletions were made/ possible prior to final counting and accounting. Plus that a given set or quantity of ballots that were not used also show no voting records with those ID's should exist, or at least should be counted.
In regard to pre-election day prep, a couple of factors you did not mention (or I missed):
Gaging the number of voters expected so enough poll staff and precinct locations are in place to avoid long lines and long waits [coupled with back up equipment, etc. in case something goes wrong?]
Consider holding elections over a weekend day so fewer people need to take time off from work or go before/after work. Enhancing security in lieu of convenience does not mean convience has to be given short shrift.
In regard to same day or early week voting, do you have any thoughts about supervised drop boxes? I do that with our mail in ballots now, and thus avoid lines, etc., but I can see that there are still issues of potential malpractice that could occur.
I would support changing Election Day to a weekend, but I believe that it is mandated by the constitution.
Drop boxes are not secure enough unless they are inside government buildings, and voters should still have to go through the same process listed in the article. It should also not be for the general voter.
Another minor item: Ref. Early Voting item f: "States are encouraged to provide transportation from nursing homes and hospitals to early voting centers." Presumably some nursing homes or assisted living facilities (or even election supervisor's teams going into hospitals?) would also qualify as dedicated voting centers?
Might even want to have a LEO accompany some teams in some cases to ensure legality of the ballot collector team? [Kind of an overkill, but if it is that important, then ... and analagous to eviction proceedings.]
Another thought on this I just had was to also implement a scheduling system like I can use for blood testing at the collection location, to coordinate arrivals and departures, transport vehicles/staff, etc. Ah, details, they all need to be considered. :-)
Kind of minor but ... Ref. Registration 3 f: "Annually verify that residence addresses are actual residences (and not businesses, empty lots, graveyards, etc)." My first reaction was "this is kind of excessive to do this annually". Then I thought about it some more and thought, "yeah, there is merit given how building use could change over time." Then I thought "but if you have the data from building permits or zoning change requests to change a building's use; don't you have what you need to id proper residence addresses from noncompliant ones?" To reduce the work load, I could see some dedicated effort to confirm such addressing on (perhaps) a four year cycle?
The frequency is not so important to me as the fact that it is actually done on a regular basis. State-level voting registers become out-of-date very quickly if not frequently verified and purged. Think of how many college students go off to college every year.
Federal elections take place every 2 years, and I do not think that it should be done immediately before an election so that it gives less incentive to game the system for a specific election.
With Google Maps this should actually be quite easy.
?? Did you perhaps misstate a negative you did not mean? Or am I misunderstanding your criteria "immediately before an election"? The closer to the election the determination is made, the less risk of fraud, but probably confirming updates is not doable in a normal cyclic fashion in any case, at least unless there is a database already available that can be queried a couple of weeks ahead of the election?
No, changes to the voting registrar made immediately before an election (say 3-4 weeks) are the most likely to be done to benefit an individual candidate. The changes should be made outside the election season.
Verifying new registration should take place immediately during registration.
Ref. Registration item 2 f: "Last four digits of the Social Security number." While SS #'s are in wide use as unique identifiers, they are also subject to wider financial fraud use, etc. My voter registration card has a unique ID # associated with my name, etc. Why is that not sufficient? Granting this is for federal (nation wide) elections, but the Con. still puts election detail responsibility on the states.
As for the US Constitution, I added in the following to the article to make it more clear:
What Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 Says
"The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."
It is basically about validating that the person standing in front of them at the voting center is in fact the person who they say they are. It should be easy for any voter to rattle off this info. If they cannot, this means that they are likely not who they say they are.
Ok, but if they are intent on voting fraudulently, would they not have invested the time to memorize that info ahead of time? Like any personal authentication, we can achieve it (sort of) by something we know (SS# or password), something we have (physical card or phone with a texted incident #), or something we are (face, fingerprints, retina scans).
You are suggesting we use 2 factors of authentication, which I endorse as a minimum, but just maybe we should consider using three?
Good post, providing some of the details of background history on voting and balloting procedures that I did not know or realize was so extensive. I fully agree with your intro comment, as one of those statements that are so obivous we tend to forget that they should be stated or restated prominently and frequently to ensure their acceptance:
"We need to acknowledge that there is a clear trade-off between: * Convenience in voting and * Security within the voting process." [Thomas Sowell's insight on tradeoffs, again!! :-) ]
The companion comment you make later also falls into that "oh so obvious" category it deserves equal emphasis: "Almost impossible to prove that fraud occurred immediately after an election takes place." Or in the weeks up to final certification of the election results.
I also endorse your position on Federalism.
I do have a couple of places needing clarification of your details, or potential (hopefully minor) objections and will try to separate them into distinct replies
Last item: Voting Day item 9: "Paper ballots must be stored for at least six months in a secure location." Given the sensitivity of election results and the reprocussions if something illegal or fraudulent was found, and the long time it can take for court cases to be mounted and completed, would you be adverse to extending that time to 18 or 24 months? Longer with a court order?
Overall, again, a great post, and I fully accept all of the other ideas you mentioned that I did not ask about. :-)
Voting Day item 3 and following: "Every paper ballot must have a unique scannable code attached to it." This is a great idea and some venues probably do this already?
Do you want to institute this "chain of custody" practice only starting with election day [or early week] as ballots are handed to voters, or start with the capture of ballot status coming from the print shop?
On item 4c: "Candidates voted for each office." Maybe I don't understand this properly. I presume you are also wanting to keep the ID of the voter and the ID of the ballot separate so his/her voting selection cannot be tied back to said voter once they enter the booth or deposit their ballot? The metadata shows the set of candidates legitimately to be selected among for that election/ precinct, etc.; and not the candidates the voter selected for each legitimately available position?
And then overall, the collection of ballot IDs shows that the # of voters and ballots match, etc., and that no additions or deletions were made/ possible prior to final counting and accounting. Plus that a given set or quantity of ballots that were not used also show no voting records with those ID's should exist, or at least should be counted.
In regard to pre-election day prep, a couple of factors you did not mention (or I missed):
Gaging the number of voters expected so enough poll staff and precinct locations are in place to avoid long lines and long waits [coupled with back up equipment, etc. in case something goes wrong?]
Consider holding elections over a weekend day so fewer people need to take time off from work or go before/after work. Enhancing security in lieu of convenience does not mean convience has to be given short shrift.
In regard to same day or early week voting, do you have any thoughts about supervised drop boxes? I do that with our mail in ballots now, and thus avoid lines, etc., but I can see that there are still issues of potential malpractice that could occur.
I would support changing Election Day to a weekend, but I believe that it is mandated by the constitution.
Drop boxes are not secure enough unless they are inside government buildings, and voters should still have to go through the same process listed in the article. It should also not be for the general voter.
Another minor item: Ref. Early Voting item f: "States are encouraged to provide transportation from nursing homes and hospitals to early voting centers." Presumably some nursing homes or assisted living facilities (or even election supervisor's teams going into hospitals?) would also qualify as dedicated voting centers?
Might even want to have a LEO accompany some teams in some cases to ensure legality of the ballot collector team? [Kind of an overkill, but if it is that important, then ... and analagous to eviction proceedings.]
Another thought on this I just had was to also implement a scheduling system like I can use for blood testing at the collection location, to coordinate arrivals and departures, transport vehicles/staff, etc. Ah, details, they all need to be considered. :-)
Kind of minor but ... Ref. Registration 3 f: "Annually verify that residence addresses are actual residences (and not businesses, empty lots, graveyards, etc)." My first reaction was "this is kind of excessive to do this annually". Then I thought about it some more and thought, "yeah, there is merit given how building use could change over time." Then I thought "but if you have the data from building permits or zoning change requests to change a building's use; don't you have what you need to id proper residence addresses from noncompliant ones?" To reduce the work load, I could see some dedicated effort to confirm such addressing on (perhaps) a four year cycle?
The frequency is not so important to me as the fact that it is actually done on a regular basis. State-level voting registers become out-of-date very quickly if not frequently verified and purged. Think of how many college students go off to college every year.
Federal elections take place every 2 years, and I do not think that it should be done immediately before an election so that it gives less incentive to game the system for a specific election.
With Google Maps this should actually be quite easy.
?? Did you perhaps misstate a negative you did not mean? Or am I misunderstanding your criteria "immediately before an election"? The closer to the election the determination is made, the less risk of fraud, but probably confirming updates is not doable in a normal cyclic fashion in any case, at least unless there is a database already available that can be queried a couple of weeks ahead of the election?
No, changes to the voting registrar made immediately before an election (say 3-4 weeks) are the most likely to be done to benefit an individual candidate. The changes should be made outside the election season.
Verifying new registration should take place immediately during registration.
Ref. Registration item 2 f: "Last four digits of the Social Security number." While SS #'s are in wide use as unique identifiers, they are also subject to wider financial fraud use, etc. My voter registration card has a unique ID # associated with my name, etc. Why is that not sufficient? Granting this is for federal (nation wide) elections, but the Con. still puts election detail responsibility on the states.
As for the US Constitution, I added in the following to the article to make it more clear:
What Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 Says
"The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."
It is basically about validating that the person standing in front of them at the voting center is in fact the person who they say they are. It should be easy for any voter to rattle off this info. If they cannot, this means that they are likely not who they say they are.
Ok, but if they are intent on voting fraudulently, would they not have invested the time to memorize that info ahead of time? Like any personal authentication, we can achieve it (sort of) by something we know (SS# or password), something we have (physical card or phone with a texted incident #), or something we are (face, fingerprints, retina scans).
You are suggesting we use 2 factors of authentication, which I endorse as a minimum, but just maybe we should consider using three?
I am open to the details on the proper verification at the voting station. All the above are much more secure than voting at home.