Webcast Thursday, 27 January at 12 PM ET with Jonathan Auerbach:
We estimate the change in the reported number of voter fraud cases when states switch to conducting elections by mail. We consider states where many voters have historically received ballots by mail and a subset where registered voters are automatically sent ballots by mail. We compare the number of voter fraud cases in these states to the number of cases in remaining states using difference in differences and matrix completion (via nuclear-norm penalization). We find no evidence that voting by mail increases the risk of voter fraud overall. In fact, we estimate Washington would have reported 73 more cases of fraud between 2011 and 2019 had it not introduced its vote-by-mail law.
Here’s the research paper, “Does Voting by Mail Increase Fraud? Estimating the Change in Reported Voter Fraud When States Switch to Elections By Mail,” by Jonathan Auerbach and Steve Pierson. They do a clever thing and use descriptive section titles in the paper:
1 Vote by Mail (VBM) Refers to How Voters Receive Their Ballots; Most Voters That “Vote By Mail” Actually Return Their Ballots In Person
2 Fraud Rates Are Not Higher in RBM (VBM) States Than Non-RBM (non-VBM) States
3 Washington and Colorado Did Not Have Higher Fraud Rates When Compared to Similar “Synthetic” States That Did Not Switch to Voting by Mail
4 Discussion
Could vote-by-mail be making it harder to detect election fraud?
Point 3 should read “Detected Fraud Rates Are Not Higher in RBM (VBM) States Than Non-RBM (non-VBM) States”. Which entirely not surprising, there is even the following argument which is entirely consistent with the data: “places that don’t care about voter fraud both don’t check for voter fraud and allow vote by mail”.
In fact, it’s obvious that adding an option to vote by mail increases the attack surface for voter fraud. You don’t need “difference in differences and matrix completion (via nuclear-norm penalization)” or any statistical techniques to see this, this is just common sense.
Not that I am against voting by mail. I think its benefits outweigh the extra bit of voter fraud. But to claim that voting by mail does not increase voter fraud is ridiculous. To add an anecdote: I’ve even witnessed “voter fraud” by mail myself: a couple of years ago I saw an elderly person tell her son which box to tick and mail the ballot, because he was helping her go through the mail.
“But to claim that voting by mail does not increase voter fraud is ridiculous.”
This is an example of the fallacy of appeal to personal incredulity.
Republicans in Oregon searched far and wide for indications of increased voter fraud when the state began to move towards vote by mail back in the (IIRC) 1980s. They couldn’t find any. They weren’t really interested in fraud, but fears that making voting easier would increase the odds of Democrats winning.
The switch to complete vote-by-mail happened in 2000, by voter initiative. This came after a decade of various state-wide vote-by-mail elections, or a mix of poll+vote-by-mail elections.
The measure passed with a large margin. The GOP gave up opposing it as a healthy majority of Republicans voted for it. Also by then there was data showing that there had been no real advantage for Democrats.
> But to claim that voting by mail does not increase voter fraud is ridiculous.
Evidence is for losers.
>This is an example of the fallacy of appeal to personal incredulity.
No, it would only be a fallacy if I had been using this to derive a point. What I’ve written is simply an opinion.
I did not make this argument explicit, but it seems like I need to. Expected values of nonnegative values are positive unless they are zero almost everywhere. Assuming that voting by mail does not reduce other forms of voter fraud, the expected amount of extra voter fraud is nonnegative. My example shows that “voter fraud” by mail is not zero almost everywhere. QED.
The counteragument – that someone below makes – is that the assumption is flawed, and that voting by mail decreases other forms of voter fraud. Which I grudgingly accept as a possibility, though not a very likely one.
>They couldn’t find any.
Are you familiar with the streetlight effect? Voter fraud by mail is very hard to detect. Would you expect them to catch e.g. 5 extra cases of voter fraud?
Again, I’m not against voting by mail. Where I live it would be ridiculous to even talk of abolishing it. However, it is obvious to me that this does not reduce fraud given that a mail ballot is far easier to fake than a non-mail one.
Matty –
> Which I grudgingly accept as a possibility,…
Good. And so then the question is why it wasn’t to you from the outset as it was to others?
> though not a very likely one.
Argument by assertion is a kissin’ cousin with arguing from personal incredulity.
> However, it is obvious to me that this does not reduce fraud
..
Evidence is for losers.
> given that a mail ballot is far easier to fake than a non-mail one.
Evidence is for losers.
> it’s obvious that adding an option to vote by mail increases the attack surface for voter fraud
that’s a biased argument, because VBM also reduces other attack surfaces
a common way of election fraud is stuffing a ballot box. At the end of the day, you simply strike off a few people who haven’t showed up to vote, and cast their ballots for them
with vote-by-mail, you run the risk that these people sent in ballots, creating a double vote, that will trigger an investigation; this discourages that type of election fraud.
>a common way of election fraud is stuffing a ballot box. At the end of the day, you simply strike off a few people who haven’t showed up to vote, and cast their ballots for them
If the people at the polls don’t know who applied to vote by mail then sure. But aren’t ballot boxes closely watched in western countries? Where I live, I can’t imagine this kind of ballot box stuffing to work.
But ok, I grudgingly admit that my argument is not completely airtight because of niche cases where VBL might reduce voter fraud.
“I’ve even witnessed “voter fraud” by mail myself: a couple of years ago I saw an elderly person tell her son which box to tick and mail the ballot, because he was helping her go through the mail.”
Um, that is not voter fraud. It is entirely legal and acceptable to have someone help you fill out your ballot, including at an actual polling place (so not only is this not voter fraud, it’s also irrelevant to mail-in voting).
Your anecdote is not voter fraud, at least in the state of Oregon where vote by mail has been the norm for decades now.
“Any Oregon voter can get assistance to:
register to vote
vote their ballot
return their ballot
You can also get help from a care provider, family member or someone else you choose.”
As long as the ballot reflects your intent, it is not fraud in Oregon.
Now if she had given the ballot to her son and said “fill it out with whoever you want and forge my signature”, that would be voter fraud.
If someone stopped by your house in Oregon and offered me $20 to fill out your ballot, you could take the $20, allow the person to fill out the ballot, then sign it and mail it. How would that be detected?
Voter fraud is rare in this country, as efforts to prove it is common showed this past election cycle, as they failed to uncover more than a few instances.
As I said above, opponents to vote-by-mail in Oregon, i.e. the Republican Party who were concerned that it would lead to more votes for Democrats by people who for whatever reason find it difficult to make it to the polls (as was true of my father in the last years of his life), turned over every stone they could think of to show it increased fraud.
They couldn’t.
Where I live ballots don’t have signatures or if they do, it was a “vote for the candidate of party X and then sign for me dear” situation. I’m 100% sure it was illegal, but I’m also 100% sure that this was the kind of situation where it’s morally ok to break the law.
Ballots are unsigned everywhere. Anonymous voting is a right.
The enclosing envelope is signed or, if the person is incapable of signing, marked by the person (generally with an “X”) with the name written on the envelope and sworn to by a witness.
Similar provisions are provided to help people vote in person.
Details vary from state to state but voting is a constitutional right, not restricted to those who aren’t blind, for instance.
“Where I live ballots don’t have signatures or if they do…”
So you don’t actually know how voting works in your state, yet repeat your claim that what you witnessed was voter fraud.
Tch tch.