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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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Why?
Just going to preface this by saying that I absolutely do support vote by mail, it's objectively a good thing
However, there's a problem that should be considered in that it can create opportunities for coerced voting either within a household, or by requiring someone to send a photo of their form.
The former being more of a problem than the later
But you can make that argument about anything...
Can't have salads because they could be used for voter coercion?
It is not my intent to equate "x has problem y" with "x should not exist" very good systems can and do get abused and misused.
There's a reason I started my comment with
All I'm saying is that maybe there should be a way for people to go back and override their votes (which admittedly could probably also be abused in some situations), or better yet, just better social safety nets to help people get out of those situations. I'm not suggesting I have all of the answers, just acknowledging that the person at the top of the thread raises a valid, if possibly overstated, concern.
Because your abusive spouse/preacher/etc. can make you show your ballot, or even mark it for you.
You can still go vote in person.
I think you don't appreciate abusive and controlling relationships for how bad they can be
a) some states are pure vote by mail. b) if you have the option of voting at home, that exact same abuser can make you exercise it.
I used to oppose VBM because of this. Now I see it as a trade off since there are also benefits that can outweigh the problems. But a person with their eyes open should not pretend that the problems don't exist.
Which states? I am not aware of any that are solely vote by mail.
If you wanted to, it would be easy to screw up your ballot request. Throw it out when you get it, mess up the form, forget to sign, offer to take it to the post office and never mail it... Then it's "oh no it never came, let's just go vote in person".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting_in_the_United_States#All_vote-by-mail
And, the existence of methods to escape abusers prevents some instances of abuse, but doesn't eliminate the problem.
From the article you linked
Yes, that is California. In the exact same paragraph, other states are listed which don't offer the option. Oregon was the one that came to my mind immediately.
The issue is, having an option to do something the right way is not all that helpful. If there is an option to do it the wrong way, attackers (using "attacker" in the sense of computer security) will do what they can to make you use that option, so they can exploit it. Therefore, security systems should make doing the wrong thing impossible, rather than merely making the right thing possible.
You're correct, I should have been more thorough.
Here's one of the sources cited by that Wikipedia article:
According to this, "All mail elections" are not different from "mostly mail" elections, and doesn't preclude the use of in person voting.
Also
Please no, imo that's an incredibly fucked line of reasoning
You can't vote in person in Oregon. There are no voting booths in the state. It is ALL done by mail, the way I heard it.
"Casting a ballot at a polling place" is not "voting in person". I sometimes cast my own ballots (California) at polling places. That is, fill in the ballot at home, and drop it off at the polling station instead of mailing it. Voting in person means there is a physical voting booth that you enter, close the curtain, and THEN make your voting choices, in an environment where no one else can see them. Poll workers are supposed to make sure that nobody goes into the booth with you, with some exceptions for disabled people (there are similar exceptions for absentee voting in non-VBM states). It's against the law to photograph your filled-in ballot inside the booth, though in the phone camera era that has become near impossible to enforce.
It is what you have to do in a secure system. Voting (like retail loss prevention) is of course a security vs convenience trade-off, so you might choose to allow the insecure approach at least some of the time. Again, a person with their eyes open has to be aware of all the issues and reach an informed conclusion. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downgrade_attack
Yeah, ok, that sucks. Oregon should still try to make actual polling locations available for people who need (or want) it.
I still don't think that that's a reason to abandon vote by mail altogether. The accessibility of it reduces the impact of other voting problems we have in the us overall.
I'm still going to push back hard on the idea that the system has to be 100% perfect. So long as humans are involved, that simply isn't possible.
There are always going to be tradeoffs.
I'm not currently proposing abandoning VBM, I'm just saying people shouldn't ignore the issue. A secret ballot is supposed to be one of the foundations of democracy and VBM doesn't provide it the way a voting booth does. These days though, I would be scared of voting booths (at least where there are long lines) because of COVID. COVID is what kicked California over to near-universal VBM in 2019, after all.
People have studied and analyzed this stuff for centuries and it's very easy to overlook things or make false assumptions if you just examine the immediate situation, without awareness of its long history. I'm not any kind of expert, but as a security nerd, I've seen the topic come up in that context.