I have voted in person in every election, except one while I was overseas

[MineralMan]

in the USAF. I love going to my polling place to vote.

HOWEVER, this year I will be voting by mail on an absentee ballot. The reason is that we are in the midst of a pandemic, and there's a chance I might be ill on election day. Probably that won't happen, but I will be voting absentee at the first opportunity, as soon as I receive my absentee ballot.

I'm not going to take any chances this year of being unable to vote.

I will hate to miss going to my precinct's polling place, but I would hate even more not being able to cast my ballot.

I suggest that everyone consider that possibility and vote by mail or by dropping your absentee ballot of at a designated location. Don't take a chance in 2020!

[PTWB]

1. I'll be voting in person.

I suspect that absentee ballots will be Trump’s vehicle to contest the results of the election. That doesn’t mean he will be successful but I want him to lose on election night... clearly and convincingly.

[qwlauren35]

2. I've thought about it.

Unless there is a drop-off box in front of a Board of Elections office, I'm going to do early voting.

Right now, we are experiencing extremely erratic, irregular mail service. We never know if we will get mail, and we usually get mail every day. I expect it to get worse before it gets better.

If it takes days before mail is postmarked, and postmarking is the rule of whether a vote is counted, I see potential problems. I know that people are being told to turn their ballots in a week in advance, but who listens to that????

If Trump wasn't tampering with USPS, I would vote by mail. But he is. So I won't.

If I have to wear hazmat gear when I go to vote, so be it.

[at140]

3. Are ballots easy to duplicate?

Money bills have all sorts of security measures. I have always voted in person, so do not know what absentee ballots look like.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. It will depend on your state, but at least in mine it would be almost impossible

to submit a fake ballot. You have to request an absentee ballot (which you can do online), and you have to include some ID in the request, either your drivers' license or state ID number or the last 4 digits of your SSN, which will be used to determine whether and where you are registered. They will then send you a ballot to fill out. The ballot itself has no identification, but after you vote you place it in the brown envelope that came with the packet. Then you complete the signature envelope, which will come partly completed with a sticker with your name and address, by filling in your voter ID so they can match it to the record of your ballot request, and signing it. For the general election you also have to have your signature witnessed by another registered voter. Then you place the brown envelope with the ballot in the signature envelope and put that in the big postage-prepaid mailing envelope that came with the packet, and either mail it or take it to the office it's supposed to be sent to. The office that tallies the votes will again verify your name and ID against registration records before sending the ballot to be counted.

[at140]

7. I know this sounds crass....but

If I picked up all the ballots in my neighbor hood in open mail boxes wearing a mask on my face,
and mail those all in how will they know it was me who did this illegal operation?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. If you actually mailed them there's no problem, though it would be technically illegal.

If people mail their ballots by putting them in a USPS box there's also no problem.

[PTWB]

12. I think you missed his point.

He’s saying in his scenario he could steal everyone’s ballots from their mailbox, then fill them out and return them.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

13. He would have to know all of their voter ID numbers, at least in my state.

If someone stole the ballots from mailboxes, filled them in and then returned them without each individual's voter ID number on each signature envelope, they would not be counted. See posts #5 and #11.

[PTWB]

14. It seems unlikely he would have access to that information.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

15. Exactly. That's why it's an unlikely scenario.

Minnesota, at least, is very careful about its voting procedures.

[we can do it]

8. Same ballot, just inserted in a specific envelope .

[MineralMan]

11. In Minnesota, the outer envelope in which you put the ballot,

has a label stuck on it that has your registration information, address, and a bar code that identifies you. On that envelope, you enter your ID number, which is either your Driver's licence number, state ID card number, or the last four digits of your SS#. Then, you sign the envelope, using the same signature you used when you registered. If a witness is required, the witness signature also goes on that envelope. Your ballot, which is printed on a plain piece of paper, goes inside another sealed envelope, which has no identifying information on it and then into the envelope you signed and that has all the information on it. All envelopes are sealed. Finally, you put the set of envelopes into a postage paid mailing envelope, which has no identification on it, and has the address for the place it goes.

Once they receive the mailing envelope, it is opened. They then check the identifying envelope and verify that it is you and that you are registered to vote. They check for a matching signature. I don't know if that is done by a person or by a computer. Once verified, that envelope is opened and the plain envelope containing your ballot is removed and put in a safe place for the counting process. Your identifying envelope is stored separately in case a recount requires checking ballots and registration information. Once the envelope containing your completed ballot is removed, it will not be opened until election day, and there can be no connection between it and your identification information. On election day, ballots are removed from the unmarked envelopes and counted on optical readers and tallied.

After you mail your ballot in, you can check the Secretary of State's website to see if has been received and accepted for counting. You use the same identification information you put on that envelope to identify yourself, which maintains secrecy. If it is not accepted, or has not been received and accepted, you can vote in person on Election Day.

That's how they do it in Minnesota. I can't see any way to fake an absentee ballot, since a pre-printed sticker with the bar code, etc. is used to verify your registration. That would be very hard to duplicate, since each barcode is unique to each registered voter. Secrecy is maintained because the identifying envelope and the plain ballot envelope are separated as the first steo after verification. Minnesota takes great care in validating elections.

[at140]

18. You describe it in detail that fake ballots would be very difficult to insert into the count in MN

And I can agree 100%.
My concern is more about stolen ballots in states where most voting is done in person.
Many voters would not remember to follow up if they never received their ballot in mail.
If someone went raiding mail boxes and stole the authentic ballots, voted their preference and mailed it in,
Secretary of State may accept it as valid ballot.

[Locutusofborg]

4. Best of both worlds

I'm a permanent absentee voter in California. I haven't been to a polling station in 15 years. The state mails me my ballot. I fill it out at the dining room table with a cup of coffee (California ballots are extremely long due to the number of propositions), I sign it and then I drive over to the Registrar of Voters and drop it in a drive through collection box. Takes about 20 minutes there and back.
There is a frightening article at Vox today about how Democrats might be harmed by mail-in ballots. The number of rejected ballots (post-marked late, signature doesn't match what's on file) is very high. In states where Republicans control the electoral process, this could be a serious problem.
https://www.vox.com/2020/7/31/21340039/november-election-coronavirus-trump-biden

[Locutusofborg]

6. Excerpt from the article I referenced above

"As the Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman recently wrote, high rates of rejected absentee ballots could have a profound impact on the election. If Democratic voters use mail-in ballots more than Republicans during the 2020 election, they run the risk that more of those ballots could be rejected if they’re not received on time — which could be problematic for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
Wasserman writes:
For a moment, imagine a swing state where 42 percent of ballots are cast by mail and Biden carries them 80 percent to 20 percent, while Trump carries all other ballots 70 percent to 30 percent. If every ballot were to count, Biden would win the state 51 percent to 49 percent. But if eight percent of absentees were ruled invalid for various reasons - and the invalidated votes were reflective of the overall absentee pool - Trump would prevail by two hundredths of one percent."
https://www.vox.com/2020/7/31/21340039/november-election-coronavirus-trump-biden

I note that Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner all had absentee ballots rejected for being late

[moonscape]

9. Same here. I have been attached to

the ritual of going to my polling place election day and only voted absentee when I was out of country. There's something satisfying about being there but I also will vote by drop-off.

Will definitely miss the ritual, esp for this most critical election, but it's critical enough not to take any chances.

[Kaleva]

16. Dropped off mine & my wife's primary ballots at the township hall last week.

I had made it a point to be the very first at the local poll on election day but am going with mail in voting from now on.

[Luciferous]

17. I voted by mail last time and dropped it off at the village hall, and will be doing the same for our

upcoming election. I also like having time to look over the choices, especially for the local races.