[EL] FL absentee voting rules and the attempted Miami-Dade web-request absentee ballot fraud

[Steve Kolbert]

Rick suggests Florida reconsider its allowance for no-excuse absentee
ballots. Whatever the merits of Florida's no-excuse absentee balloting
regime, I'm not sure that eliminating no-excuse absentee balloting would
have stopped the Miami-Dade incident, in which a hacker fraudulently
requested other voters' absentee ballots en masse via the Internet.

Even if Florida moved to an excuse-required absentee balloting regime, if a
fraudster can request ballots online en masse, the fraudster can just as
easily alter his/her hack to communicate an appropriate "excuse" to the
Supervisor of Elections' computer systems during the hack -- especially if
one of those reasons doesn't require offline submission of additional
proof. The problem, then, is the Internet-based request system, not the
no-excuse legal regime.

So what to do about the Internet request system? Well, Florida already has
measures in place to stop the kind of abuse attempted in the Miami-Dade
incident, and has recently enacted further measures.

First, it has vigilant election officials, who in fact detected and stopped
this hack before the fraudulently-requested ballots shipped out.

Second, if a hacker did succeed in fraudulently obtaining another voter's
absentee ballot (by whatever means, Internet hack or otherwise), Florida
law requires local election officials to compare the signature on the
ballot return materials with the voter's signature on the registration
rolls or (thanks to legislation passed this session) to the voter's more
recent signature on his/her precinct register. When a fraudster's signature
does not match the voter's signature on record, officials will reject the
ballot.

Third, in specific response to the Miami-Dade attempted absentee ballot
fraud, Florida passed new legislation that allows voters to request ballots
by phone or Internet only if the voter requests that the ballot arrive at
his/her registration address. For ballots sent to an address other than the
registration address, the voter must request the ballot in a signed writing
-- not via the Internet. (UOCAVA voters are exempt from the requirement.)
This means that if a hacker succeeded in fraudulently requesting absentee
ballots en masse via the Internet, the hacker could only manage to get
election officials to mail ballots to voters, not to the hacker.

To be clear, there might be other reasons to do away with Florida's
no-excuse absentee balloting regime. But the Miami-Dade incident speaks to
a separate problem, which requires a separate solution.

For further information about Florida's recent elections legislation:

Fla. Laws, Ch. 2013-57 (absentee ballot provisions in section 11, starts on
p.10 of the PDF)
http://laws.flrules.org/files/Ch_2013_057.pdf

FL Sec/State memo re: new law (h/t Ken Tinkler of FloridaElectionLaw.com)
http://election.dos.state.fl.us/publications/pdf/2013/Memo_re_2013_Leg_Elections_Bills.pdf


Steve Kolbert
(202) 422-2588
steve.kolbert at gmail.com
@Pronounce_the_T


On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 12:41 PM, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:

> “U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia’s staff chief implicated in ballot scheme”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=51159>
>  Posted on May 31, 2013 4:21 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=51159> by Rick
> Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>
> Important *Miami Herald *report<http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/31/3426745_miami-congressman-joe-garcias.html>
> :
>
> Congressman Joe Garcia’s chief of staff abruptly resigned Friday after
> being implicated in a sophisticated scheme to manipulate last year’s
> primary elections by submitting hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot
> requests.
>
> Friday afternoon, Garcia said he had asked Jeffrey Garcia, no relation,
> for his resignation after the chief of staff — also the congressman’s top
> political strategist — took responsibility for the plot. Joe Garcia took
> the action hours after law enforcement investigators raided the homes of
> another of his employees and a former campaign aide in connection with an
> ongoing investigation.
>
> I think it is time for Florida to reconsider the use of no-excuse absentee
> ballots.
>  [image: Share]<http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D51159&title=%E2%80%9CU.S.%20Rep.%20Joe%20Garcia%E2%80%99s%20staff%20chief%20implicated%20in%20ballot%20scheme%E2%80%9D&description=>
>   Posted in absentee ballots <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=53>,
> chicanery <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12> | Comments Off
>
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