For November 6, in Los Angeles County:
The regular L.A. County voting process does produce a physical artifact, which is good, at least. The artifact of the regular in-polls process is a computer-readable ink dot card that does NOT have information about the contests on it, which is not so good. Today, I asked election officials if there was a way provided for voters to vote in polls on a paper ballot that shows the contests. At this time, they do not have any provision for such. So, at this time, a voter is not able to submit his votes in L.A. County in a way that physically attaches the vote to the contest.
My concern about the ink dots being separated from the information about the contests is that someone could potentially swap out the key to read a particular precinct’s ballots, resulting in the entire precinct’s ballots being counted incorrectly. There are enough precincts in L.A. County that doing this for a few precincts could go unnoticed. The order of candidates is randomized from precinct to precinct, so each precinct has its own key. A proper recount process would require the original sample ballot for the precinct and manual counting of the dots by humans. But even then, there is the potential that a fraudulent sample ballot could be provided. The only real way to get around this would be for the voting artifact to have both the contest and the vote on it.
Another thing that can happen is that vote recorders (those things we slide our ballots into to mark them) can be given to a precinct that don’t match the sample ballot. I’ve actually seen that happen. The situation was reported, and the County Recorder’s office had a sheriff bring us what they thought was a replacement. It turned out to have the same order as the one we sent back, so we had to do without one of the vote recorders we should have had, causing the line to back up a bit for voters voting for that party.
The somewhat good news is that beginning this election, the ballots for the vote by mail system DO show the contests on the ballot itself. The contest and the vote are together on the same artifact. The down side is that vote by mail ballots must be turned in in an envelope with the voter’s name, address, and signature on it. If the vote by mail ballot is turned in without a signature, it won’t count. Furthermore, if the signature is deemed to be a non-match for the signature on the voter registration, this is also cause to reject a ballot. This year, we were told about something new: If the county receives a vote by mail ballot in the mail and the envelope is not signed or has a non-matching signature, they will send a notice out to the voter that can be signed and returned, so at least there’s a second chance. But in any case, a vote by mail ballot loses the guarantee of anonymity due to the requirements of what must be on the envelope, which is an opportunity for fuckery, as this crowd would call it.