Boxed In - Drop Boxes, Vote By Mail and Election Fraud

The Fraud Triad

In the previous article, I wrote how easy it is to generate fraudulent ballots through use of voter rolls. The next problem for those who would corrupt elections is to get those ballots injected into the system to be counted. Fortunately for them, many states, including California, have made provision for such a contingency—ballot drop boxes.

Drop boxes are part of what I call the Election Fraud Triad. The Triad consists of dirty voter rolls, ballot drop boxes, and vote by mail, and together those three elements ensure that election fraud is easy, hard to detect, and widespread enough to change the outcome of most elections.

The ways that drop boxes contribute to fraud are legion. Let me introduce you to a few.

Ballot drop boxes are justified on the basis that they prevent ballot theft, that they are needed for people who don't trust the postal service, and that they make voting more convenient. All of these are red herrings, possibly designed to distract from what might be the real purpose of drop boxes.

I'm from the government and I'm here to help

Ballot theft is so old school. Modern election fraud relies on adding lots of ballots to the count, not on subtracting a relatively small number of ballots through theft. Most drop boxes are located only a short distance from a post office or mail pickup point. Fifty feet from my front door is a cluster mailbox where I can deposit my ballot. As for trusting the postal service, yes there have been cases of lost ballots or of outright theft, but again, the numbers are generally too small to matter.

For the purposes of inserting large numbers of ballots into the system, drop boxes are hard to beat and rank among the top three or four methods used.

The movie ‘2000 Mules’ documented how thousands of ballots were introduced into the election process. In the California fraud case reported earlier, drop boxes were likely used to deposit ballots.

Drop boxes keep fraudulent ballots safe

Once placed in a drop box, fraudulent boxes are usually quite safe and are almost guaranteed to be counted. About the only hurdle remaining to be crossed is signature checking in those states that still indulge in such ineffectual practices.

Even electronic signature checking, which is generally more reliable than manual checks, can be dialled down. In the interest of throughput, as well as in keeping ballot challenge rates down, there is often pressure to make signature checking as superficial as possible. That means that only the most obvious signatures will be questioned, and most rejections will be for ballots without signatures.

Rejecting too many ballots makes election officials look bad and can lead to charges of election interference. Rejection rates of one to two percent seem to be acceptable to the public and give the appearance that the checking process is working to find and eliminate fraud. Low rates also support claims that our elections are safe and secure and serve to disparage claims of widespread fraud.

Fraud begins at home

The real problem is that fraud happens well before a ballot gets to the ballot box. Fictional voters in the rolls, ballot redirection, and many other sources of improper ballots yet to be described all benefit from ballot drop boxes.

Many states require video monitoring of drop boxes. Even if someone can identify a person depositing ballots in a box, once the envelope is in the box, there is almost no way to tell who deposited it. Ballot envelopes generally do not have a checkbox to indicate the contents are fraudulent, and aren't even color coded. In fact, fraudulent ballot envelopes look just like legitimate ones. Ballot boxes don't have sensors to distinguish between legitimate and fraudulent ballots.

The result is that ballot drop boxes provide low risk ways to introduce huge numbers of fraudulent ballots into the system—ballots that are virtually guaranteed to be counted. As mentioned before, even if someone is caught, the penalties are usually much less severe than for putting a fraudulent ballot in the mail.

Fraud pays and pays well

As the investigations for the ‘2000 Mules’ movie and other investigations found, mules get paid twenty to forty dollars per ballot deposited. That would be a small investment for someone wanting to subvert an election even at a local level. A few million dollars could win a national election. With costs of national campaigns running into hundreds of millions, some would consider a few millions of dollars for tens of thousands of guaranteed votes to be money well spent. Every ballot in a drop box is a vote in the bank.

It's a feature—I swear

That brings us to the next leg of the Triad—vote by mail, aka absentee voting. On its face, having ballots mailed out to every voter that they can fill out and return at their leisure sounds great. It sounded great to every nation in the European Union as well. They all tried it in one form or another, and every one of them went back to traditional in-person voting because of fraud. They, at least, could learn from their mistakes. Although, from the perspective of the fraudster, the ease of election manipulation through vote by mail is a feature, not a bug.

Two major aspects of vote by mail systems support fraud—anonymity and volume. When a vote by mail ballot is received for counting, it is assumed that the ballot came from the indicated voter, but there is actually no assurance that is true. In many jurisdictions, there are signature requirements, but as we have seen, such checking fails to detect all but a small fraction of fraudulent ballots, and will likely even reject some legitimate ballots by mistake.

Lots of useful raw material

Regarding volume, in states such as California and Washington, millions of ballots are mailed out, and typically less than half are returned. It is assumed that those ballots not returned are discarded and have no effect on election results. As we shall see, that is a grossly false assumption.

The problems with vote by mail systems run deep but we will only be able to touch on a few of them. Even that few, though, are enough to wreak great harm. Take, for example, the simple act of ballot interception. In this approach, ballots are collected from mailboxes, common apartment areas, dumpsters and trash receptacles, and many other sources, never actually being delivered to their legitimate recipients.

These intercepted ballots are marked, signed with a forged signature, and returned. The legitimate voter either had tossed their ballot away, or assumed it had been lost in the mail. If they vote in person, they are likely to learn that they have already voted, or at least that a vote was recorded in their name. At that point it is too late to recover the fraudulent ballot, and the most that might be possible is to record a second vote for the victimized voter, although, most states do not allow that. First in, first counted.

On the other side, vote by mail supports ballot replacement. This is where voters return their ballots, but the outgoing ballot is intercepted, and the contents replaced with a fraudulent ballot before it reaches a secure collection point such as a post office.

Alternatively, many states, including California, allow ballot harvesting. This is where people are allowed to collect ballots from others, ostensibly for delivery to a mail box or ballot box.

Reaping the harvest

Too often, those ballots take a side trip to where their contents are examined, and those with unfavorable contents have their ballots replaced. Nursing homes and care facilities are especially vulnerable to this activity. The nice aspect here for the fraudster is that the envelope usually bears the signature of a legitimate voter likely to pass signature checks. It is just that the contents are not what that voter provided. Too bad, so sad.

The huge volume of ballots mailed out contributes large numbers of pristine ballot forms that can be used to replace ballots that make the "wrong" choices. In a county in California, with just under a half million voters, more than half the ballots mailed out in the last election were not returned. That is a lot of raw material for ballot interception, and ballot replacement.

A little extra income

Going rates for ballots both clean unvoted, as well as return ballots are nationally in the range of $40 to $50 with figures as high as $200 per ballot in certain areas. Collecting even a few hundred ballots can provide a nice tax free income for someone willing to take a fairly small risk. Again a small cost relative to the value for those who want to win and have no qualms about methods.

We even conducted local surveys to see how people felt about various issues associated with elections. One question gave surprising results consistently. A quarter of respondents believed it was legal to sell their ballot. It's not. But then again, it is a chance to make a quick fifty bucks for something they have no desire to use.

We've only scratched the surface of the problems with vote by mail. Future articles will expand on the issues and offer ways to fight the fraud. If your state has ballot drop boxes, ballot harvesting, universal or poorly managed absentee voting, it is time to get rid of those facilitating components of election fraud. Even if the legislatures balk at change, there is much that can be done. Stay tuned—more to come.