I’ve seen picture of US lemming already voting, How does that even work

I volunteered a few time to run a voting station in France, one of the first stuff I learned is always have two persons near the ballot box. If a dishonest person is alone, it’s pretty easy to add a few ballots in the box and sign near the name of persons who are too sick/old to go voting in person.

Logistically speaking, it’s in general not too hard to find enough volunteers (especially on a Sunday) to keep an eye on the vote from Let’s say 7:30 when the empty box is sealed to 22:30 when counting is done and you’ve signed the paperwork. But this work if the vote occurs only over one day.

I see US-Americans voting almost 2 weeks before the election, how does it happen practically, do you have enough volunteer to run ballot station for 2 weeks ? Are civil servant paid to do so ? How do you make-sure nobody tampers the box at night ?

  • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
    20·
    1 month ago

    The exact specifics vary based on the state, but it’s roughly the same in each of them.
    You track the voter, ballot, collection and counting.

    Voter A issued ballot 3. Ballot 3 collected Ballot 3 counted.

    The counting phase involves removing the tracking number from the ballot before removing a cover that keeps the vote private.

    You can’t slip an extra ballot into the box because then the totals don’t add up, and you know where in the process the discrepancy occurred.
    Making sure there are multiple eyes on issuing and counting means it’s hard to create or count a fake ballot.
    When not observed by multiple people, the containers are locked with multiple locks with keys held by different people.

    It’s why most voter fraud is a voter going to multiple valid voting locations to vote multiple times. Once the tabulations begin, you see you counted the number collected, collected the number issued, and that you issued one ballot to each voter except one, who got three.

    • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
      6·
      1 month ago

      How do people vote at different locations? Here we are only registered to vote in a single location, if we’re away then we have to go to the police station and sign a delegation form to allow a trusted person to vote for us in the original location.

      • Sequentialsilence@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 month ago

        Where I am there’s simply too many people to have a single location, so there are 4 different locations you can vote at in the district.

        • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
          3·
          1 month ago

          I mean, yes here too, but we’re still assigned a specific place. My voting location is booth 6 at my local primary school, and someone else in my city might get one of the booths at their closest location despite both of us being in the same district.

          Even at that primary school, I’m only on the ledger at booth 6, if I tried voting at booth 5 they wouldn’t let me (though they would point me to the booth right next to them of course)

          • Sequentialsilence@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 month ago

            Oh, we’re not that organized. The only thing that they really do is require some form of government ID. They don’t really care what they just need to identify you.

            They don’t check if you’re allowed to vote, or if you’ve already voted before you vote, as those machines aren’t connected to the internet, so there’s no database to check against. It is checked after the fact when they start counting as the counting machines are connected to the internet.

            We had an issue about a decade ago where they were able to hack voting machines on election day, ever since then voting machines aren’t allowed to be connected to the internet.

            • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
              2·
              1 month ago

              I mean, not connecting machines to the internet is entirely reasonable (though in my opinion having them at all is insane).

              That’s really interesting though, because your model creates a system where fraud can exist but can be checked (and thus it will, not doing it would be insane), whereas ours removes the problem entirely. I know that you personally don’t have the power to change it, of courses I’m just fascinated by the ways society manages to create deeply flawed systems and prop them up like we can’t do any better.

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        1 month ago

        I have an assigned voting location, but there are several in my district that are all “valid”, and I was just assigned the one closest to my house. If I were to be confused and go to a valid location I wasn’t assigned to, I’m still in the ledger. Since I’m attempting to vote in the correct district, they don’t really have grounds to turn me away.

        If I were in the wrong district, I’m still allowed to cast a provisional ballot, which lets you vote but they sort it out later.

        You can also vote absentee and then also in person and not disclose that you need to invalidate the absent vote. Here that’s automatic, but in some places it’s a crime.

        You’re also allowed to go to a clerks office, which has the equipment to print any ballot and handle it correctly.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
      11·
      1 month ago

      This sounds nice in theory, but there’s a county in my state which hasn’t had a good count in my lifetime. All the collected ballots still get counted, and because the count doesn’t match a recount can’t be conducted by rule. Once ballots are in the box it’s functionallly impossible to determine illegitimate ones. There’s definitely legitimate mistakes that can cause that, but it’s essentially impossible to prove it was fraud and not losing a few stubs, a missing spoiled ballot, or someone just keeping a ballot that were merely accidental.