alt Hacker NewsI once read an account by a poll watcher of her experience in 2012. She said that at her polling place, there had been a number of people showing up to vote on Election Day, being told they had already voted during the early-voting process, and swearing up and down that that wasn't true, that they always voted on Election Day and never voted early, and that whoever had voted in their name had done so fraudulently.
Now, in that particular case, the state (I believe it was Colorado though I'd have to find the article I read, and I don't remember where to find it any more) didn't require photo ID, so there was no way to prove that the people showing up on Election Day were the actual voters, as opposed to the cheaters. But this poll watcher's opinion was that they were the actual voters, and the cheating had been done by whoever had submitted ballots in their name days (or weeks) earlier. Given how many people she said this had happened to, I'm inclined to agree with her: it wasn't three or four people, it was (she said) something like one-third of the people who showed up on Election Day at that polling place.
That's a case where the fraud couldn't be repaired by knowing that it had occurred — the fraudulent ballots (if they were indeed fraudulent) had already been accepted, and it was impossible to go pull the ballot allegedly belonging to Joe Smith back out of the ballot box. But the publicly-available list of "who voted" did at least make it possible for the fraud to be detected in that particular case.
Replies
This sounds like some third-hand anecdata. Trump et al (Chris Kobach, for one) have spent millions of dollars trying to find voter fraud and they have all come up with zilch.
And you have some memory of some account from someone 12 years ago in a state you can't remember saying that a third of voters had someone pretend to be them?
If this were close to true, it wouldn't be some blog post that you can't remember; it would have been a national scandal and it would have been something that we would never forget because the election stealer conspiracy theorists would never let it go.
Really, you should just delete this post as it's irresponsible and lacks any data.
I think all you can do is sue at that point.
I personally do support voter ID, and for the same reason. Members of the public must be able to verify the process is happening fairly. It might be fair without it (fraud truly negligible), but it must also be seen to be fair. This would resolve so many controversies.
Likewise mandatory voting and private ballots (can cast a donkey vote) helps ensure the public people are not being paid to vote and that other biases are not coming into play.