[EL] Uh oh, Rick...

[Richard Winger]

Also I find it is useful to tell people that even with the strictest government-photo ID in place, there will still be election fraud of different types. A perfect election is impossible.  I once asked my barber how he had just voted on a ballot measure, and he told me he didn't know because he and his wife vote by mail (in California over half the voters do that now), and he always gives his ballot to his wife to mark for him.  He said he doesn't even ask how she votes in his name.
I think this is common in states in which a significant number of voters vote by mail.  I think it is a problem in institutions, such as nursing homes and hospitals.  And it may be a problem that mail delivery is imperfect and genuine mail ballots fall into the hands of someone other than the intended recipient.  It's true a mailed ballot's outside envelope must be signed by the intended recipient, but in many cases the crook will know what the intended recipient's signature looks like and will imitate it.

As to impersonation of voters at the polls, I have certainly known many people in the age group of 18-20 who managed to obtain phony drivers licenses showing them to be somewhat older, which was for the purpose of letting the owner go into bars or otherwise buy alcohol.  Maybe modern technology has made it more difficult for individuals to obtain or manufacture phony drivers licenses, but weigh that against the fact that generally, polling place officials are not experts in detecting phony ID.
 Richard Winger
415-922-9779
PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
      From: "Hess, Doug" <HESSDOUG at Grinnell.EDU>
 To: "law-election at department-lists.uci.edu" <law-election at department-lists.uci.edu> 
 Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 12:02 PM
 Subject: [EL] Uh oh, Rick...
   
In addition to the critiques about the research, we still have to keep in mind that the CENTRAL policy issue is to balance the benefits of barriers to ineligible votes being cast to the costs of such barriers. E.g., we could have much stricter policing of income taxes, but at some point we would find the costs (tangible and intangible) to be more than many wish to pay. For elections: do we want to institute policies that prevent a number of improperly cast ballots if those same policies also prevent a much larger number of eligible ballots from being cast?

-Doug 
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