Warren Harrison wrote: > U.S. Mail is typically considered pretty tamper-resistent. In fact, > documents that are > classified as less than TOP SECRET (SECRET and CONFIDENTIAL) can be > sent via > U.S. Mail using some specific safeguards like not using mailboxes > (have to send Bizzare. The US Post is famous for losing mail. You'd have to be deranged to send something irreplaceable in the mail. Also, the threat of "will someone open & read this secret document in this plain envelope?" is a completely different threat from "will an irate democrat/republican/whatever letter carrier deliberately lose a bunch of clearly marked ballots from a specific county/neighborhood?" > it form a post office), using either Registered or Express mail, etc. > with a return > receipt. As long as the package doesn't go out of a USPS facility, the > assumption is pretty much that items are secure. Can mail carriers be > bribed? Sure, but at least they undergo background checks - the same > can't really be said for the "election observers" who volunteer to watch > you and I vote when we do it in person. That makes no sense: election observers are provided from each party to provide checks & balances: they watch the ballots, and each other. The same is not true of letter carriers working alone. I would far rather have observation by 2 conflicting self-interested rascals than a single party of unknown loyalty. > Voters that want confirmation that their vote arrived can probably > send the The voter's interest is not to ensure that their own ballot got counted, but rather to ensure that all the ballots were counted fairly. A freakishly rare voter verification scheme that is only used by 1% of the voters (a wildly optimistic estimate) has no impact on election fairness. > You of course still can't do much about the controlling patriarch that > insists on > filling out his wife and adult children's ballot in vote by mail, but > because of the > signature, he couldn't send in the ballots without their > participation. Anyway > I have to figure that in 90% of such cases they have their family > members so > intimidated that if they load 'em up in their GMC and drag the family > down to > the polls they'll vote the way they are "supposed to" anyway. There are actual laws prohibiting spouses going into voting booths together. These laws are unevenly enforced, but they exist for that reason. Crispin -- Crispin Cowan, Ph.D. http://immunix.com/~crispin/ Chief Scientist, Immunix http://immunix.com http://www.immunix.com/shop/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Sep 11 2003 - 14:59:10 PDT