The Absurdity of Widespread Mail-In Voter Fraud

 Mail-in voting is now under great scrutiny from politicians and the media, particularly the fear that some people will vote multiple times. One politician went so far as to explicitly tell his supporters to vote twice. I worked in the County Elections Office in Santa Barbara, California in the 2002 election, and know that such activity would be extremely unlikely to succeed, especially at a scale large enough to sway any but the closest and most local election.

In the first section of this piece I will lay out the exact procedure for three kinds of voting -- two are in-person, and one is absentee. In the final section I will demonstrate how extremely difficult it would be to a) successfully vote more than once without incurring prison time or fines, and b) significantly impact an election.

The Mechanics of Voting 

Early and In-Person Voting - These two voting procedures are virtually identical. A voter comes into their polling place (or elections office) and identifies themselves in the required way. Some states require that they show ID, while in states like California they need only give their name, address, and identifying information. Once the voter is identified, and confirmed not to be an absentee voter (this part is critical for reasons we’ll see later), they sign the voter rolls, and are given a ballot which they vote on the spot. 

If the voter is determined to be absentee, or they show up in-person on Election Day and the records show they voted early, they’re given a provisional ballot. This is placed in a sealed envelope and signed (in some cases multiple times) in the presence of the election worker, and dropped into the ballot box to be processed later (see below).

Mail-In Voting (sometimes called absentee) - This is where a voter receives their ballot in the mail, votes, and then sends it back, usually with one/more signatures and other identifying information required written on the envelope. It’s important to note that voter files record if a person is registered absentee, and as stated above, if they are registered absentee, they’re not allowed to vote a normal ballot if they show up in person.

I’d also note here that absentee ballots also have an additional security measure not applied to normal ballots: each one is checked individually by an elections worker for matching signatures and any other required identifying information. If the ballot doesn’t have a matching signature, it’s set aside to be reviewed by a second worker, or in some cases a pair of workers, to confirm that it should be thrown out. Between ~1-5% of ballots fail this check and are deemed invallid and discarded.

Provisional Ballots - As mentioned above, if something goes wrong, and a voter shows up in-person on Election Day when they were registered absentee, they’re given a provisional ballot, which is placed in a bright yellow envelope marked “Provisional.”

In all cases, these provisional ballots are set aside for counting until the very end of the process, after all other ballots (in-person, absentee ballots, etc) have been counted. The process for checking these ballots is extremely similar to mail-in ballots, with additional checks on signatures, but with one additional step: The voter’s record for that election is checked, and if it shows that any other ballot (of any type) was received or counted, the provisional envelope is discarded as invallid.

As the absentee (and eventually provisional) ballots are counted, members from the major parties, or any member of the public, can walk into an elections office at any time and demand to observe workers while they’re processing ballots. This means exactly what it sounds like. Someone standing over your shoulder, staring at your computer screen, scrutinizing every decision you make. 

At any time, these observers can challenge a decision, whether it be accepting a ballot they think is suspect, or rejecting a ballot they deem to be valid. These challenged ballots are set aside to be examined by multiple workers, often with one or more observers. While this sounds like an avenue ripe for corrupt intent, in my observation challenges from either party were fairly rare (well under 5%) for the main reason that anyone who’s worked at a bank will attest: signatures are pretty darn unique. In 96-98%+ of cases when you looked at an envelope, that signature looked exactly the same as it did on the image capture from the voter registration database.

Why Voter Fraud is Rare

Given the mechanics of voting as described above, it’s clear that it is exceptionally difficult to successfully vote more than once. Moreover, a further deterrent is the fact that voting more than once in any election is a federal felony, punishable by 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. In 28 states, it’s also a felony according to state law, with similar lengths of imprisonment and fines; (in Georgia you can get 10 years and a $100,000 fine). 

Now that we’ve made clear this is a serious crime with extremely strict penalties, usually at both state and federal levels, let’s talk logistics: As I laid out above, most states have systems in place to prevent double voting (any second attempt will get you a provisional ballot that won’t be counted if you’ve already voted.) Some states, like Pennsylvania, have automated systems in place that literally won’t allow a second vote from any voter to be counted. Thus, if a voter tries to vote early, then absentee, then in person, the mechanics of the system will ensure that (at most) only one of those votes will be counted.

So, one might ask, how can we steal an election? The answer will look different, depending on whether we’re trying to do so in-person or through mail-in voting.

In-person voter fraud

For in-person fraud, we would begin by hacking into the elections database to find voters' names, addresses, and signatures. Then, we would go to each different polling place (because you could never visit the same polling place twice, unless you wanted to be recognized by the poll workers there), and pretend to be each voter, reciting the memorized names/addresses. Here we are hoping that said voter has not already shown up to vote, since that would immediately identify you as a felon (likely on both a state and federal level). We would need to bring fake ID for each voter (in states where ID is required), or be able to fake each person’s signature on the rolls (in states where it isn’t). Once done, we would drive to the next polling location and repeat the process. I’d also note that each one of these stops is likely taking us 15-20 minutes, longer if there’s a line, and travel time between locations adds time.

Each time we do this we’d be subject to being caught, as polling locations close to each other sometimes share workers. Also remember, that the later in the day we go, the more likely we are to be impersonating someone who has already voted, thus increasing our chance of being identified as a fraudulent voter. Each stop also adds a possible state and federal felony charge if caught, meaning that if we did this for 12 full hours, possibly impersonating ~20 voters, we could easily be looking at potential life imprisonment.

If a potential life sentence in federal prison seems absurd for ~19 additional votes, you’d be right, and that number of additional votes would never sway an election of any size. Thus, to make this work, you’d have to recruit a small army of friends, giving them their own list of voters, their own fake ids or forged signatures, and their own willingness to commit several dozen felonies all in one day. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t have any friends that I’d be comfortable “bringing in” to such a scheme, for fear that each person brought in would increase the likelihood the entire operation would be revealed to authorities.

Mail-in voter fraud

I laid out the absurd scenario above in order to illustrate the preposterousness of the idea of widespread in-person voter fraud. Mail-in voter fraud, as I’m about to demonstrate, would be nearly impossible to execute.

First, an additional piece of context to our discussion is necessary: Mail fraud is a federal felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine. Mail theft is also a federal felony, punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and up to a $250,000 fine.

To begin this process, we would need to hack into the voter database to obtain names, addresses, and signatures of said voters. We’d then need to monitor the mail for each voter, waiting for the day(s) when they get ballots. We’d then have to collect each ballot without being caught (mail theft), bring it home, fill it out, forging signatures and required identifying information, and then send it back (mail fraud). We’d also have to hope that no voters call the elections office to report that their ballot never arrived, since they would potentially come into the office in person and vote early, preventing any mail-in ballots later received from being counted. They could also request another ballot be sent, which would mean that two ballots would be received in the elections office and only one would be counted (giving us only a 50% chance of swaying that one additional vote). 

A quick assessment of risk: Using Georgia as an example, if caught at any step, we would be looking at a potential 25 years in federal prison, and a $500,000 fine, as well as state penalties of 10 years in state prison and a $100,000 fine. I’m not sure how the average criminal would feel about it, but 35 years in prison and $600,000 in fines seems like a lot to risk for one additional vote that may only have a 50% chance of being counted in some cases.

The risk/reward calculation above is why almost all cases of voter fraud (which are exceedingly rare in nature) don’t involve mail-in ballots. The penalties and prison time are far higher for mail-in voter fraud than in-person voter fraud.

Conclusion

Voter fraud is rare: It entails high fines, long prison sentences (at both the state and federal level), and logistical hurdles that make it exceptionally difficult to pull off at any scale more than a small handful of votes. 

Even assuming someone was willing to put in all that time and energy (committing crimes), wouldn’t that same amount of time and energy be better spent simply walking door to door and getting out the vote? 

Thoughts on Executive "Orders"

I want to address these point by point, but let me first explain why they're "orders" and not just orders. Two of the four main items weren't even orders, they were memoranda. Think of them as fancy office memos. The other two are pretty limited in scope, and it's fairly easy to argue that all four will be moderately effective at best in helping anyone.

Let's look at each of these in turn and explore why they're all fairly toothless and ineffectual.

1) Payroll Tax Deferral - Likely Legal

This one doesn't really do much, except defer when the taxes will be collected. There is no "cut," since the executive holds no power to levy or reduce taxes. He can only control "the execution of the laws," and so in this case is telling the IRS to collect the tax later.

Only a few problems:

1. Payroll companies and HR departments aren't set up for this. It would require them to change their software to track what they're supposed to collect, but to not collect it now. Then later (at some unspecified date), they'd collect it. It's not legally clear when this later collection would have to happen, but bleh...
2. People aren't paying less in taxes, they're just paying them a month or two (or 6) down the line. 
3. This has NO EFFECT on people who are unemployed, and are thus suffering the most, since they don't have paychecks, and thus don't pay payroll taxes

I think it's safe to say that #3 is the biggest problem, and the one people are talking about the least.

2)  Unemployment Aid Extended - Possibly Legal

In this case the president is pulling from FEMA disaster funds right before hurricane season kicks off, so sounds like a great idea. That being said, it has other problems too:

1. It maxes out at $400, 2/3 of the current benefit (before that benefit expired two weeks ago). So, in effect, it's a cut from where people were that was keeping them afloat.
2. It only works if the state kicks in extra money first. Want the full $400? Your state first needs to authorize giving you an extra $100 from their pocket, and the Feds kick in the other $300. Think states will be authorizing extra money in this environment? Yeah, think again.
3. It only has enough funds for 5 weeks. Yeah, you read that previous sentence right, though because of the problem laid out in #2, maybe the funds will last far longer because no one can use them because states won't kick in any money to start with.

Who knows, but the above problems are real problems, and even if states do give extra money(#2), look at #3 again. It's not good.

3) "Halting" Evictions - Definitely Legal

This is possible the stupidest and most useless of the four. It order federal agencies to think about whether to stop evictions in some cases.

Yeah, let's think about it. Maybe we should. Who knows, but it's safe to say that thinking about it won't do much on a massive scale. 

This one is definitely legal, hands down, precisely for the reasons that it's so fucking stupid and toothless.

4) Student Loan Forgiveness - Definitely Legal

This actually seems like the most useful, and definitely in the legal camp. It extends the 0% interest rate on student loans and pauses payments until the end of the year. This is well within the purview of the Feds, and doesn't seem to be pushing any major legal envelopes. 

My one critique of this? Why not go further and actually cancel some amount of student debt? It wouldn't cost that much in the grand scheme of things, and could have profound consequences on individual people's lives. Maybe wipe out $10,000 or $20K of people's debt. For lower income folks that extra couple hundred bucks a month could have a really positive impact, both in their lives, and in the extra money that would be plowed into the economy in their local communities.

Conclusion

Trump's overall actions seem mostly legal. They also seem mostly ineffective or, at best, moderately effective in some limited cases ($400 a week isn't nothing, even if it does only last 5 weeks).

The problems we're facing are much bigger than any we've seen since the Great Depression and WWII. This is not the time for small solutions. In a future post I hope to share a few solutions that would be drastically better and more effective, but that (unfortunately) would absolutely require buy in from Congress. 

That last part is why we're all fucked....

On the Republican Response to Obamacare

On social media this afternoon I saw someone write, "Oh, but it keeps coverage for pre-existing conditions and lets children stay on their parents' plan until they're 26, so that's good." Well, yes and no. It's good that it keeps those things, but the way the new bill is structured, it doesn't really matter. For me to explain why, it's helpful if we had a brief primer on Obamacare. As with everything I write, I'm not going to cite phonebooks worth in the foot notes, just trust me, this is the way it works.

In short, Obamacare is a number of different policies that are all cobbled together to provide coverage for tens of millions of people. This obviously isn't every detail of 2,200 pages of legislation, rather think of this as the very abbreviated summary. Some basic pieces:

1. Medicaid Expansion - It expands Medicaid coverage for folks well over the poverty line. Unfortunately, it left it up to state governments themselves to decide if they wanted to take the federal medicaid funds, and thus whether their residents were covered. There's now a lot of evidence that states that embraced the law are doing far better on premium increases than states that didn't.
2. Coverage for kids until they're 26 - One of the most popular provisions, it allows parents to cover their children on their employer's insurance until they're 26.
3. Coverage for Pre-existing conditions - Possibly the most popular part of the bill. Anyone who's ever been pregnant, had cancer, or needed surgery for something and then later could never get insurance knows what this is about.
4. Individual Exchanges and Subsidies - The core of Obamacare as most people know it. The key here is that people making under $45,000 a year get subsidies to buy into insurance. The amount subsidized is based on income and age. If you're older and make just above the medicaid cutoff, you might get a hefty subsidy and only be spending a small amount per month for pretty good care (my mom is paying $1/month for her Silver Kaiser plan). This is completely changed in the Republican plan, and not in a good way (I have some examples below).
5. No Lifetime Caps - Again, those of us who've had cancer or major health issues will understand this. The old caps were often measured in the millions, but if you had a major issue, you can reach that number very quickly.

All of the above is fairly popular, and in the case of the mandate to cover regardless of pre-existing conditions, more popular than puppy dogs or apple pie. There's only one problem: it all has to be paid for. Obamacare does this is two major ways:

1. Free Preventive Care - You might wonder why I mention this as paying for the above, "Doesn't paying for preventive care cost money?" you may ask. Well, yes and no. Imagine a situation where I sprain my toe. I have health insurance so I go into the doctor and he looks at me and gives me a boot to wear. I lose one morning of work and it costs me $25 in co-pays and my insurance pays a couple hundred for the visit and the boot. Now, let's say that in all similar situations we know that people with this injury when they go untreated have a 7.67% chance of causing a severe foot injury, and in those 7.67% of cases they end up in the hospital for half a day and it costs $15,000. Does the couple hundred dollars sound like much to the insurance company if they know there's a 1/14 chance it could costs a lot more? For an individual it might seem expensive to spend a couple hundred bucks, but for the insurer, and the system in general, it's much cheaper overall to pay for the prevention when it might not be needed every time, than to wait and let things get much more expensive later.
2. Individual Mandate - The least popular part of the bill, and the provision that pays for a lot of the bill. This one makes people mad, and has libertarians fuming, even though the idea itself came from conservatives.

Many have written in the last few days on all the problems with the Republican plan, how Republicans hate it, how dysfunctional it is, how liberals hate it, and how it won't work. Some of these objections are political, some are policy-wonk-type objections, but I think all need to be distilled down to one main point:

The unpopular parts of the bill (the mandate) help pay for all the popular parts. You can't have one without the other.

In slightly more detail, the ACA is a massive construct of policy, and all the pieces and parts fit together in complex ways, but it all comes down to a basic concept, that has at its core an ethical idea: We're all in this together. The markets work because they have both (a few) sick people, and (lots and lots of) healthy people in the same pool. If we remove that penalty, it could lead to a death spiral in many insurance markets around the country. I could explain how in lots of details, but this cartoon will actually explain a lot better than I can.

As we see, the Republican plan could easily lead to a faster increase in insurance costs as healthy people leave the system because they don't see the benefit, and don't ever come back until they're really sick, at which point they may the pool higher risk/cost for everyone. Obamacare has a number of provisions and counter-balances built in place to handle increased costs like this, while the Republican plan seems to rely on deregulation to unleash the power of the marketplace, which will somehow figure it all out. Let's take two people as examples. Again, think of this for the concept, I'm not basing this on anyone I know, just trying to make a point:

• Rachel is 45 and makes $31,000 a year. Her Obamacare premiums are $860 a month (she picked a silver plan), but because of her age and income, her subsidy covers 85% of the cost, so she pays $129/month. The subsidy adjusts with her income and age to try to minimize her costs until she makes over $45,000/year. Under the Republican plan she gets a credit of $4500/year, and competition in the market leads to insurers coming out with high deductible plans that are only $591/month. "Great!" you may exclaim, "the marketplace has solved the problem!" Well, not really, because if you take her yearly premiums of $7100 and subtract her $4500 you get $217/month. Basically Rachel is now paying almost 100% more for worse coverage. Next year, when the premiums increase, she will still be getting the same $4,500 to offset costs, while under Obamacare her subsidy was covering 85% of whatever the increase was.
• Steve is 31 and makes $70,000 a year. His Obamacare premium is $550 a month (he picked a bronze plan). He makes too much to get a subsidy under Obamacare, so he pays 100% of his premiums. Yes, he makes more than double what Rachel makes, but he also pays over 4X in his monthly premium. Under the Republican plan he'll get a credit of $2750/year to apply to premiums, which will also be cheaper due to competition, a higher deductible plan is $415/month for him, of which $229 is offset by his subsidy. Next year when premiums increase though, he'll be in the same boat as Rachel, with the same $2750 tax rebate, no matter how large the increase.

So we have a system that penalizes the poorer person to the tune of a 100% increase, and gives the middle class guy a cut in his costs. This is why it doesn't really matter that the Republican plan still covers pre-existing conditions: If your subsidy just dropped by thousands of dollars and the only plan you can afford costs you twice as much for less coverage, unless you're really sick, why stay in the system at all? We can easily see any number of scenarios where either Steve or Rachel drop their plans altogether, and only come back in when they get really sick.

Here are a few ideas that I've heard mentioned that could improve the Republican plan dramatically, and if it fails to pass, could even improve Obamacare (and health care generally) as well:

1. Auto-Enrollment - It was thought this might be in the Republican plan, but they opted for the 30% fee as a replacement to the individual mandate. The basic idea is that every person gets automatically enrolled by the system. Employers would have a standardized way to inform the government when you have employer coverage, and if they don't provide it for you, they'd have a standard way to enroll you. Everything happens automatically, and you can't opt out unless you can prove that you have coverage in some other way (maybe through your spouse's employer coverage). Premiums come directly out of your paycheck, in the same way that payroll taxes come directly out of your paycheck. Everything is automated.
2. Competition across state/county lines - Similar to what the Republicans have, but at every level and more transparent. Also, when combined with transparent pricing, this could allow for competition among providers, not just among insurance companies.
3. Transparency on Pricing - Let's say you're a doctor, a surgeon, a hospital, whatever. If you provide health services, you're required to publish your pricing to a centralized database that's run publicly, but that can be accessed by any insurance company, patient, or researcher at will. If you're a lab that charges $126 for a certain blood test, but the lab right down the street charges $48, we'll all see it, and so will insurers. Insurers will be able to immediately negotiate lower prices and pass the savings on to the whole system.
4. Children Cover their Parents through Employer Plans - This seems like a no brainer to me. If you have a parent that doesn't have coverage through their employer, and they don't want to join the medicaid rolls (who does?) you can sign them up on your plan. This is a significant burden to add for employers, so it could likely only apply to large employers, and everyone else would have to be auto-enrolled through the individual marketplace.

In short, you can't have your Obamacare dessert (coverage for kids to 26, coverage for pre-existing conditions) without your Obamacare vegetables (individual mandate or automatic enrollment for everyone). One pays for the other, and if we try to have one without the other...well...go look at that cartoon again.

New Flickr Upload

I just downloaded tons of pics on Flickr from my road trip with mom earlier this year... Good times:-)

Chewing on the Walker Decision...

I'm now chewing on it, and have been for a couple days since Sarah read it on the way home in the car; more details coming soon...