STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – Forget about any of President Donald Trump’s blusterings about potential fraud when it comes to voting by mail.
We’ve got plenty of simple incompetence to go around, and it should make anybody seriously question whether New York is ready to handle what is likely to be a monsoon of mailed-in ballots for this year’s presidential election.
It was revealed last week that because of a vendor error, nearly 100,000 Brooklyn residents had received faulty envelopes as part of their absentee ballot packages. The envelopes had the wrong voter name and address on them.
A very bad thing, as voters are supposed to place their completed ballots in the envelopes and sign the outside before sending it back to the Board of Elections. If the name on the envelope doesn’t match the signature, the ballot could be disqualified.
Imagine the scandal if that many votes were potentially called into question and voided. Think of the court cases. Think of the delay in finalizing the vote. Not that it’s likely to change the outcome in bluer-than-blue New York State.
And the BOE’s fix could be just as problematic. The agency will send new ballots to those voters who received improper envelopes.
But as Gov. Andrew Cuomo pointed out, there was nothing wrong with the actual ballots the voters received. The problem was with the envelopes. Why send duplicate absentee ballots to people who have already received valid absentee ballots? Having that many duplicate ballots floating around is ripe for potential errors if not fraud right there.
Talk about muddy waters. And it could only get muddier the closer we get to Election Day.
New York City simply isn’t ready a massive volume of absentee voting. Our system just isn’t built out to handle it. And the BOE isn’t always a paragon of efficiency even in the best of times, never mind during the most hotly contested presidential election in decades.
There’s nothing wrong with voting by mail. Other states have done it for years. But they have long-standing systems in place. They’re not doing things on the fly.
And even more people could be looking to vote by mail after Trump tested positive for coronavirus last week, sparking new concerns about the potential dangers of the virus. That’s going to keep people away from the polling places.
And the problems for New Yorkers don’t end with the Brooklyn snafu. Recall how long it took us to count the votes from this year’s primaries, a much smaller number of ballots than the avalanche we expect to see less than a month from now.
Meanwhile, other states allow for ballots to arrive ever-later past Election Day, so long as they’re postmarked properly. California allows ballots to arrive until 17 days after Election Day. In Illinois, it’s 14 days. Ohio, 10 days.
Meanwhile, nine overseas military ballots that were marked for Trump were found in the garbage in one county in Pennsylvania. Sure, it was only a handful of votes, but it fed Trump’s narrative that the whole process can’t be trusted. The Brooklyn snafu only magnified those concerns.
And isn’t it odd that the more technologically advanced we get as a society, the more we return to a positively primitive way of voting? Haven’t we gone beyond marking a ballot by hand and mailing it back?
It really makes you hanker for the days of the old-fashioned lever voting machines. Each machine a closed system. Simple and direct. Easy to count the vote quickly. Not many opportunities for fraud.
We don’t need Trump to cast doubt on voting by mail. The city BOE and other places are already doing the job for him.
The Link LonkOctober 05, 2020 at 05:30PM
https://www.silive.com/news/2020/10/forget-conspiracy-theories-voting-by-mail-is-already-a-giant-mess-opinion.html
Forget conspiracy theories. Voting by mail is already a giant mess (opinion) - SILive.com
https://news.google.com/search?q=forget&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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