Remove your personal information from the web at joindeleteme.com/Howtown and use code Howtown for 20% off. DeleteMe international Plans: international.joindeleteme.com
6:50: No European country has swapped paper ballots for voting machines, and in Denmark the ballot can be more than a meter long (+3 ft). They are counted by hand, at the same place, on the evening of the election. With the amount of conspiracies in the US, not to mention the 2000 election, is it really an area to compromise?
This episode was very useful and enlightening, thank you! I noticed that the sort of format pursued for this episode was considering possible ways to steal the election and their corresponding safety measures and statistics. The thing is though, if I were (theoretically of course) looking to steal the election, I would look for the holes in those systems and safety measures, which isn't really something that you showed in-depth. A sufficiently smart election thief would aim to find some kind of zero-day vulnerability in the systems you mentioned. The response on your part might be seeking out pen testers for these systems (like the ones you mentioned in def con), utilizing their perspective to better understand why a thief cannot just, for example, replace the dice at 15:16 with weighted dice. Overall, great vid, liked and subscribed!
To be fair that was more the fault of the Florida government and election board than anything else. The Supreme Court decided the case on the day before votes were to be brought to Washington and essentially all that said was that it was simply to late for a recount
Your graphic showing ONE pollworker driving the ballots back to the Registrar's office (or whatever it is called in the various states) about gave me a heart attack. As a 20+ year poll worker in California, I know that TWO poll workers must transport the physical voted ballots to their designated drop off point. In California, at least, a third person drives in a separate vehicle to a post office box and puts in it an envelop that includes a copy of the tabulation form being delivered by the two people transporting the ballots. If either copy of that form is altered when inspected by the Registrar's office, or the numbers on it don't match the physical number of ballots when counted by the Registrar's office, then something hinky went on and those three people will be followed up with. Presumably, other states have the same or similar type of independent validation process going on.
10:33 I believe it's a bit of a visual gag. The passenger seat belt is buckled in over a short poll worker with a tall hat. The box of ballots is in the rear middle seat.
Never saw this channel before. I’m from Ireland, and obviously all eyes are on the US election. It was really interesting to watch, how the voting system works (a small part of it), along with the safety features built into law. Welldone
The problem with mail in ballots is that a parent can vote for their children, either by forcing them to vote a certain way or by filling the ballots himself. Nothing beats the sacred act of going to a poll station, entering a poll both where you can vote with your conscience without coercion or fear of any consequences.
True and I think this is an issue, but it’s still very unlikely that you can “steal” an election this way, because it would require a significant portion of people to do it, and I don’t believe a majority of Americans would do this to their own families. I’m European, so I don’t necessarily understand American family dynamics, but I honestly trust the good in people to not be so cruel.
I agree to some extent, but unfortunately, in-person voting is not immune to influence or coercion either. One could say it's near indistinguishable from the social reproduction of voting patterns (how many of us just vote according to our parents' ideas, knowingly or not?). This is a trait of modern politics, regardless of voting technology.
On the “dead people voting” - in 2008, my grandfather knew he was very near death, but wanted to make sure he voted for Obama (or more specifically “voted against McCain,”) as early as he could. He did ended up making it to a couple days after Election Day.
Se volvieron mi canal favorito, me encantan sus videos: la edición es amable y no me da ansiedad, los puntitos me permiten entender el flujo de ideas, la animación está super bonita, muchas gracias ❤
Vulnerabilities you missed: - Registered voter lists are general publicly available if you are looking for people to impersonate. - Many printed ballots are actually counted from a QR code printed on the marked ballot - which is not easy for voters to verify.
Creating fake IDs and risking years of jail time, joblessness, loss of finances and property all for a few measly votes plus the fact it’s extremely high risk as once the actual person who’s identity is being stolen goes to vote, the double vote from that single person will be flagged and the fraudster quickly caught. The extremely few cases where this may actually occur would be completely inconsequential to the outcome of the election. It’s also not unreasonable to assume there’s likely equally exceedingly few cases of this on both sides of the vote.
@@diatonicdelirium1743 its easier than that require ID and in person voting. You can't go then you can't vote. It's your right to vote but your responsibility to go do it.
On the PBS TH-cam channel, they posted Deadlock: An Election Story, where a bipartisan panel navigates a hypothetical voter fraud situation, I highly recommend it!
Hi Howtown! I love this fascinating and important video. Minor correction: the captions at 8:23 say "unmarked paper ballots" when the speaker says "hand-marked paper ballots." Big difference.
What if a postworker collects a bunch of mail in ballots from a district they expect to vote for a certain party and destroys them before they get to the poll
10:33 you guys didn't address this part of the vulnerability, is it really literally just a guy transporting all the ballots in a car? Are there security escorts etc?
In IL too, the return bag is physically locked with that lock's serial number recorded. The ballots themselves are also inside of a single plastic bag which also has a sticker seal. So even if only a single person were to return the paper ballots, there are still multiple layers to prevent (or catch) them alternating those ballots.
Excellent video as always guys. This could easily tie into understanding of statistics and why sampling is conducted in the manner it is but not sure if anyone would be ready for the math intensity 😂
@ you can never guarantee an outcome that there’s no fraud, you can’t guarantee a range of fraud. There’s inherent risk, control risk and detection risk. In a system counting millions of votes it’s not logical to assume just 3 cases happened.
i feel like the postal officer interference with mail ins was maybe the best idea you mentioned? most people probably don't check that their mail in was delivered properly. they just assume it was. the issue i see with this method is that the postal worker won't know who the person voted for until they open the mail. so they would just be guessing. but if it's a person who cares enough to do this they might make good guesses about which neighborhoods mail ins they should try to interfere with...
Great video!! As someone from Germany I always wonder about electoral college and its not-so democtraic approch as you can have a majority but still loose and vice versa. Also to my understanding the lines/zones have been deliberately altered in favor of republicans. Maybe all of this is bs so I would love to get some clarification!
The electoral college was established by the Constitution as a compromise between those who thought the vote of the people should decide the President, and those who thought the President should be chosen by members of Congress. Later on, almost all the states decided their electoral votes would be "winner-take-all", to increase the state's influence on the outcome. The number of electoral votes is proportional to the population for the state, EXCEPT that the minimum number of electoral college votes for a state is 3, which tends to benefit more rural (more Republican) states. The U.S. is the only democracy in which a candidate for President can get the most popular votes and still lose the election, which happened in 2000 and 2016. The issue of the district borders affects Congressional elections (specifically for the House of Representatives) rather than the Presidential race. Every 10 years after the census, the states can redraw the borders. If you clump one party's voters into a smaller number of districts, you can limit the overall number of representatives that party has in the House. Both parties have tried to do this, but Republicans were more "successful" at it after the 2010 census because they had more control in State governments and big ones like Texas and Florida. Republicans also have a built-in advantage from the fact that Democratic voters tend to cluster in cities, limiting their geographic spread.
@@Howtown does DC not have 3 electoral college votes by virtue of the 23rd amendment? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-third_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Wonderful video! Thanks for going in depth with this. When I lived in MA, I worked the 2020/2021 elections and really enjoyed that experience! I learned a lot about the process there, and how hard it would be to "steal" it, so to speak. I love getting some insight into another state's process!
Thanks for the video. I really appreciate having information to counter claims of wide spread voter fraud. Question, though: What is stopping someone from going to a poll pretending to be someone else? I’ve been very pro voter ID laws to prevent this and the video only pointed out that this was caught because the guy walked in twice to the same polling place to pretend to be his son. It seems to me that if you knew someone was not going to vote, you could vote for them and so long as it is not at the same polling place no one would be the wiser. Thanks again!
You'd have to know that they're registered, and which polling place they vote at, and whether they've already voted before at that polling place (if not, ID is required in PA), and be willing to risk legal consequences, for 1 extra vote. So experts in this area are trying to weigh the risk of that happening against the risk of legitimate voters being denied the chance to participate.
@@Howtown At least in IL, you would also have to be able to mimic their signature, and I can tell you from my signature changing over time that they do actually check. So, very non-trivial even in states where you don't have to show ID.
@@Howtown Is US really so averse to having ID Checked at the poll booth. Most countries do it, moreover lot of countries including mine have Voter IDs specifically for election. Why is having an ID a big issue in the US. I assume most citizen would have some kind of national identification?
@@blipblop5757 The US had a period of strong voter suppression during the Jim Crow era with literacy tests, poll taxes, etc being required to vote. Some people today still see requiring id as a form of voter suppression. Not 100% of citizens have id, and it's disproportionately so with minority races, the elderly, and the poor.
I lov ethat the politicians themselves don't seem to know about this process. Watching this video should be a requirement before you're allowed to become a politician :)
So glad you guys made the point that while the processes in place to ensure integrity of the elections isn't foolproof, the greater and more likely risk here is undermining trust in the process. Of course one informs the other, but I think if people really understood that they would change how they approach talking about about these issues and concerns, for the better. Also 8:10 shoutout to the Voting Village at DEFCON!
The only thing not explained in this video is why it would take more than one day to count the votes and declare the winner in a state like Pennsylvania.
They kind of explain it but indirectly! When they talk about how the vote counts actually go from the polling places to the state, you can kind of see where there's delays there. People have to transport it in their cars then it has to go to a facility. There's people at those facilities that are going to count those things but they have to open up the bags, go through them and you have to remember. There are a lot of polling places there for a lot of bags of votes. It just takes a while!
Could you take out someone's mail filled ballot right after they drop it off(somehow get it out of the machine or say you're the person whose job is it to transport it), open it carefully, swap the vote(impossible if the ballot doesn't allow for corrections; I am not American I don't know) and carefully reseal the letter/paper.
I think that would spoil the ballot. I guess you could selectively spoil ballots to harm a particular candidate. But it would be hard for one person to affect many ballots or for many people to keep secret. The stuff that has a big impact is selectively making it harder for particular demographics to vote, and gerrymandering, which are both legal, but probably shouldn't be.
One weak point that hasn't been talked about is when someone moves from one state to another. The states are supposed to inform the previous state that someone registered to vote in the new state but sometimes the communication doesn't happen. I've seen someone hold up two mail in ballots that were sent to them from two states and I'm not sure if they could have been caught since these measures only protect election integrity within the state. There needs to be more robust audits of interstate election mechanisms
It would be a good idea to audit these things, but you have to remember one thing. The interstate election security is what actually matters right? Because at the top of this video they mentioned that you have to have a permanent address in that state to get a ballot or to get the option to vote. A permanent address is expensive when moving between two states. Yeah, you might say well I could get a PO box. No PO boxes. Don't count as permanent addresses. Okay? Well then I could rent a place that's really cheap for $100 a month and I could do it a month or two before elections that is somewhat possible but most states require 90 days ahead of the election so you'd have to be able to pay even $100 rent 3 months in a row. So you're up to $300. And this is just for one person in one state. So if you need to do this in two places, all the sudden you're paying $600 for one duplicate vote across two states. It's just not a super scalable solution! Now. You could maybe say well. I only need to rent one place but multiple people could be living in it right? Yeah, maybe that's true. So maybe you're getting some economies of scale there. But if you having too many people living in one place, eventually the government's going to start to come around asking questions! The reality is it's just not super feasible on a large scale to do election fraud as long as the State security is pretty strong which it currently is. Also, you have to remember that the US has a large tapestry of states rights stage legislations and a distrust of federal and interconnected systems. So getting cross state line audits is going to be a very challenging thing! But a very interesting problem
yeah see the problem with analysis is that the "rules" say that they check and double check names/lists there isnt anything in place to make sure that actually happens. There have been a plethora of examples of false addresses and false names getting through the systems.
The problem with the presidential elections is that the stakes are too high. We need a more diverse system of checks and balances or more frequent, less significant voting period.
Even the HERITAGE FOUNDATION admits that there are only 85 cases of noncitizen voting that happened since 2002-2023. Strategic use of a source and i love it! Another perfect arrow in my arguments quiver.
as a Pennsylvanian, I can tell you, things get stressful around here around election time. a lot of fighting and yelling in public places. way too many ads, more than anywhere else I've seen
What you didn't mention is that election fraud is not unique to one side of the political spectrum or the other. If it can happen, it will happen on both sides. It's not a right, center or left wing problem. It's not an extremist problem. It's just a problem. A very, very small problem that really has a very, very small chance of impacting the overall election in any way.
It's still crazy how the election officials and overseers are all partisan, whether it's balanced or not - In Australia we have an impartial independent electoral commission running the whole show
yeah, most democractic countries have impartial officials. the crazy part is that in the US they aren't just partisan, they're also elected! in the 2018 race to be governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp was the secretary of state overseeing the election _as well as_ the Republican candidate for governor! he got to set the rules for his own election 🙄
How can you really be sure an "independent commission" is truly independent? I'd say its a lot more fair to have objectively paritsan officials from both sides working together.
Aqui no Brasil as "feaudes" não são materiais, são c9mporamentais e acontecem através do volume de informações autorizadas e disponibilizados ao grande público que ajudam ou prejudicam cada um dos lados!
There's a huge vulnerability you overlooked; if you're a member of a party that tends to benefit from lower voter turnout, you can do things to reduce voter turnout. In quite a few states, you can simply contest the right of somebody else to vote, and if they don't address it, they can lose that right. There are certain people in those states who are contesting tens of thousands of voter registrations, because a lot of people, upon receiving a notification that they have to do something to retain their right to vote, just won't get around to it. And that's before being tricky about picking which people to contest. Certain tendencies in names of demographics likely to vote against your candidate...
Good to know about the paper backup process, coming from a nation which votes on paper the US's voting machines have seemed unsafe but your video does explain the situation and safeguards better.
Joss and Adam, I love the animations, but can you tone down the static ones that just kind of bounce around? It’s kind of distracting and a bit annoying. Also, I wish this video could be mandatory viewing for all these nuts that just want to scream voter fraud without evidence.
Here's a weird hypothetical this video has me wondering about: if you must surrender a mail in ballot in order to be eligible to vote in person, could an election official be bribed to send out a large number of mail-in ballots to specific people who did not ask for them? This would perhaps trip up some people who had no intention of voting by mail because they might go to vote in person on election day. And because they might be uninformed on the procedures surrounding mail-in voting they might show up to the voting place empty handed - unable to turn over their mail-in ballots because they didn't realize they had to surrender them. Many would probably go home and get them, but some might be annoyed/ disadvantaged enough to skip voting that year because of the hassle. If enough people don't vote because of this, it might influence certain close elections.
if it was a large number of ballots, you'd get a bunch of reports of people saying "I didn't request a ballot but they sent one" and then when they checked, there wouldn't be a record of the request (which requires drivers license or social security number). The poll workers would have the voter fill out a "provisional ballot" to keep on hand pending the investigation.
In Chicago, if your ballot is lost in the mail, you can vote on election day and certify you haven't sent it in. I think this depends on your local policies.
Something similar was discovered today in Colorado. Only it looks like someone got a hold of a handful of mail-in ballots filled them out and mailed the ballots back. Through these were flagged in two different ways. One process caught some of the filled in ballots when the signatures did not match the voters signature. The rest were caught when the legal voters contacted the election commission about not receiving their ballot after they got a notification their ballot had been received. Now that the election commission has caught these they are able to do a more detailed examination to see if there are any others. As of now there are just 12 ballots from one neighborhood.
@@mikewilliams6025 I'm not really following your comment. At a high level, the point of the video as I see it is that people running elections have been doing it for a long time and encountered many of the edge cases and found reasonable solutions. The original comment asked if the unrequested mail in ballot would be a blocker. How Town showed one way it wouldn't. I provided a specific example of how Chicago accounts for this. Even if you get a ballot in the mail, it might get damaged or the tracking data ruined. So in Chicago you can track if your ballot was delivered to you and also if it was accepted. If it gets lost one way, you just fill in an in person ballot and they invalidate the mail in one if it ever shows up.
It's easy, just go into the county that always votes blue or red, then "lose" the ballots of whichever party you don't like, it doesn't matter that its uncounted, you know who often wins and even if they know the lost em, they can't do anything about it.
It's complicated (I grew up in the US, but have lived in the UK for the last 36 years). American election papers contain a LOT. Not only federal races, but also local (State, county, city and sometimes all the way down to roles such as sanitation superintendent, police chief, library board members and the like). In addition, there may well be a load of local or statewide referenda - the Portland, Oregon ballot is four pages, and includes roles such as 'Soil and Water Conservation District', 'Urban Flood Safety and Water Quality District', mayor and various referenda such as 'shall charter be amended to delete vague, archaic language ...'. Hand counting all those would be a mammoth task. I am a dual citizen, so I've voted in the UK - and there tends to be only one (occasionally two) elections at a time. Gotta say, though, here in the UK, we have the joys of novelty candidates - it makes everything so much more entertaining (Count Binface for MP!)
There are a couple of concerns: one is that error rates are about twice as high with hand counting (though the error rate is still pretty low) www.npr.org/2022/10/07/1126796538/voting-explainer-hand-counting-ballots-accuracy-cost The second is that US elections are bigger (158 million vs 28 million votes) and more complicated than UK elections - there's usually more on the ballot. My ballot this year had 20 odd things to vote on. All that adds up to more time/resources needed to count the ballots ... and the longer it takes to get results, the more confusion and distrust there is. That's why a lot of states opt for machine counting backed up by hand-counted audits.
I think you highly underestimate how many offices the US elects at one time. Often a ballot will have up to 20+ votes on it. The UK general elections have extremely simple ballots in relation.
Our elections are very secure. It's really hard to steal by voter fraud. I have heard some people complain that we have to do the things we do and that we can't just download an app and cast a vote. However convenient that would be, the method we have in place is far better at ensuring a fair election and I would never want to sacrifice that. Excellent video.
This is a great video. However, i suspect the people that need to see this either aren't watching, or are brainwashed enough to tell you that you're wrong. The machine is full of too many bad actors making bad faith arguments to enormous audiences.
I am a non-U.S. citizen, so please pardon me if I misrepresented things, but I have some questions. 13:03 If you are a relative, shouldn't it be fairly less difficult to know the Social Security number or driver's license of someone you know close? 13:28 Can't the outer envelope itself also have multiple copies by someone and stuffed into the Dropbox?
I’m certainly not as well researched as the people in the video but as a US citizen I can try to answer. I would imagine that for your first point although you might have access to those things for a dead relative, like they said that would probably only equate to a very small number of ballots that would be very unlikely to actually change the result of any election, even local ones, so most people would probably not consider it worth the risk of jail time (even if they did still attempt it they also stated in the video that voter registrations are also often checked against death records so it would be hard to get a mail in ballot in the first place). For the second point, they stated that each bar code is unique to the individual so if they encountered the same bar code multiple times then they would know the votes are fraudulent. Hope that helps!
The claim of mass voter fraud in Wayne County, Michigan, during the 2020 U.S. presidential election is a reference to allegations raised primarily by supporters of former President Donald Trump. Wayne County, which includes Detroit, was a focal point of these claims due to its strong Democratic voting pattern and the large number of votes cast for Joe Biden. What They May Be Referencing: 1. Unbalanced Poll Books: Some critics alleged discrepancies between the number of voters recorded in poll books and the number of ballots counted, particularly in Detroit. 2. Mail-in Ballots: There were accusations that mail-in ballots were fraudulently submitted or mishandled. 3. Ballot “Dumps”: Claims circulated about large, late-night batches of ballots being added to the vote totals for Joe Biden. 4. Observers and Transparency: Allegations were made that Republican poll watchers were prevented from observing the vote count or treated unfairly. 5. Dominion Voting Machines: Some claims alleged that voting machines in Michigan flipped votes from Trump to Biden. Was There Evidence of Voter Fraud? • Investigations and Audits: Numerous investigations, recounts, and audits in Michigan, including a bipartisan canvassing of the vote and a review by the Republican-led Michigan Senate Oversight Committee, found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. • Unbalanced Precincts: The minor discrepancies in poll books (fewer than 450 votes in Detroit) were attributed to clerical errors, not fraud, and were not significant enough to affect the election outcome. • Lawsuits: Multiple lawsuits challenging the election results in Michigan, including Wayne County, were dismissed due to lack of evidence. • Certification: Wayne County’s results were certified by bipartisan canvassers, despite initial reluctance from some Republican members. Independent Findings: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) called the 2020 election the “most secure in American history.” The Department of Justice, under Attorney General William Barr, also stated they found no evidence of widespread fraud that would have affected the election outcome. Conclusion: While allegations of fraud in Wayne County gained traction among some groups, these claims were thoroughly investigated and consistently debunked by election officials, courts, and independent reviews. The claims are now widely regarded as conspiracy theories unsupported by credible evidence.
Remove your personal information from the web at joindeleteme.com/Howtown and use code Howtown for 20% off.
DeleteMe international Plans: international.joindeleteme.com
6:50: No European country has swapped paper ballots for voting machines, and in Denmark the ballot can be more than a meter long (+3 ft). They are counted by hand, at the same place, on the evening of the election. With the amount of conspiracies in the US, not to mention the 2000 election, is it really an area to compromise?
This episode was very useful and enlightening, thank you! I noticed that the sort of format pursued for this episode was considering possible ways to steal the election and their corresponding safety measures and statistics. The thing is though, if I were (theoretically of course) looking to steal the election, I would look for the holes in those systems and safety measures, which isn't really something that you showed in-depth. A sufficiently smart election thief would aim to find some kind of zero-day vulnerability in the systems you mentioned. The response on your part might be seeking out pen testers for these systems (like the ones you mentioned in def con), utilizing their perspective to better understand why a thief cannot just, for example, replace the dice at 15:16 with weighted dice. Overall, great vid, liked and subscribed!
Watching them roll fancy colorful DnD dice for an official government process just brings me such joy inside
On a crit they pull two ballots
I mean...the easiest way is just to get the supreme court to do it. No I'm not still salty about 2000.
ugh don't remind me (and I'm not even from the US)
that shit made me making a powerpoint presentation for my 6th grade class about how the electoral college should be abolished 🫣
The New York Times analyzed 2000 and found that the Supreme Court decision did not change the outcome. These are the Left's conspiracy theories.
To be fair that was more the fault of the Florida government and election board than anything else. The Supreme Court decided the case on the day before votes were to be brought to Washington and essentially all that said was that it was simply to late for a recount
That was correctly decided.
I voted for you twice with the like button! Wait a minute...
Better do it a third time to be sure
I love how peaceful Adam's cat looks like
🤣🤣
Your graphic showing ONE pollworker driving the ballots back to the Registrar's office (or whatever it is called in the various states) about gave me a heart attack. As a 20+ year poll worker in California, I know that TWO poll workers must transport the physical voted ballots to their designated drop off point. In California, at least, a third person drives in a separate vehicle to a post office box and puts in it an envelop that includes a copy of the tabulation form being delivered by the two people transporting the ballots. If either copy of that form is altered when inspected by the Registrar's office, or the numbers on it don't match the physical number of ballots when counted by the Registrar's office, then something hinky went on and those three people will be followed up with. Presumably, other states have the same or similar type of independent validation process going on.
10:33 I believe it's a bit of a visual gag. The passenger seat belt is buckled in over a short poll worker with a tall hat. The box of ballots is in the rear middle seat.
And in Los Angeles County, California, they transport some of the ballot boxes by helicopter, because LA traffic is just too atrocious.
Two poll workers, ideally of different parties, transport ballots at the end of the night in Illinois as well
Never saw this channel before. I’m from Ireland, and obviously all eyes are on the US election. It was really interesting to watch, how the voting system works (a small part of it), along with the safety features built into law.
Welldone
I actually love this animation style. Great job genuinely can’t wait for this channel to blow up
So Harri Hursti hosts a horde of hackers hunting for holes?
Hilarious!
If even the Heritage Foundation says only 85 cases happened then you know its really rare.
The problem with mail in ballots is that a parent can vote for their children, either by forcing them to vote a certain way or by filling the ballots himself.
Nothing beats the sacred act of going to a poll station, entering a poll both where you can vote with your conscience without coercion or fear of any consequences.
True and I think this is an issue, but it’s still very unlikely that you can “steal” an election this way, because it would require a significant portion of people to do it, and I don’t believe a majority of Americans would do this to their own families.
I’m European, so I don’t necessarily understand American family dynamics, but I honestly trust the good in people to not be so cruel.
True but I’d expect that scenario to average out pretty evenly across both sides
@@chistopherr7536 doubt it, there’s a direct correlation between political conservatism and wife abuse & religious conservatism and child abuse
I agree to some extent, but unfortunately, in-person voting is not immune to influence or coercion either. One could say it's near indistinguishable from the social reproduction of voting patterns (how many of us just vote according to our parents' ideas, knowingly or not?). This is a trait of modern politics, regardless of voting technology.
I can't believe that I've never seen a video like this. It was a healthy dose of reality. Thanks.
What happens in cases of ourright destruction of mailboxes or drop boxes?
People could target areas with a high concentration of support for a particular party or candidate.
@@gimmerain4daysnormally I’d say that people would have to vote again, but I feel like the USA wouldn’t do that, it’s too simple for them
On the “dead people voting” - in 2008, my grandfather knew he was very near death, but wanted to make sure he voted for Obama (or more specifically “voted against McCain,”) as early as he could. He did ended up making it to a couple days after Election Day.
Even if he did d1ê before people had counted the votes, he did cast the vote himself, so it’s not fraud. :)
Se volvieron mi canal favorito, me encantan sus videos: la edición es amable y no me da ansiedad, los puntitos me permiten entender el flujo de ideas, la animación está super bonita, muchas gracias ❤
Such a fascinating video! Loved hearing the perspectives of the people you interviewed.
Vulnerabilities you missed:
- Registered voter lists are general publicly available if you are looking for people to impersonate.
- Many printed ballots are actually counted from a QR code printed on the marked ballot - which is not easy for voters to verify.
QR codes should be very easy to verify: it produces a number or string of characters!
'Everyone' has a phone capable of reading this these days.
Creating fake IDs and risking years of jail time, joblessness, loss of finances and property all for a few measly votes plus the fact it’s extremely high risk as once the actual person who’s identity is being stolen goes to vote, the double vote from that single person will be flagged and the fraudster quickly caught.
The extremely few cases where this may actually occur would be completely inconsequential to the outcome of the election. It’s also not unreasonable to assume there’s likely equally exceedingly few cases of this on both sides of the vote.
@@diatonicdelirium1743 its easier than that require ID and in person voting. You can't go then you can't vote. It's your right to vote but your responsibility to go do it.
@@Tweeds-je6rr Totally agree: mail-in voting is ridiculous and a fraud magnet.
Holy smokes, I got that same threatening email! Lol I laughed and replied "Pull up, then. 🔫"
They didn't pull up 😢
It all depends on who’s watching the poll. How well the poll watcher are trained. How to identify irregularities.
On the PBS TH-cam channel, they posted Deadlock: An Election Story, where a bipartisan panel navigates a hypothetical voter fraud situation, I highly recommend it!
I like that the Democrat lady is wearing red and the Republican mister is wearing blue. Also I like the rest of the video!
Hi Howtown! I love this fascinating and important video. Minor correction: the captions at 8:23 say "unmarked paper ballots" when the speaker says "hand-marked paper ballots." Big difference.
Thanks! Will correct
@@Howtownwe really appreciate the correct and hand written captions 💖
What if a postworker collects a bunch of mail in ballots from a district they expect to vote for a certain party and destroys them before they get to the poll
those voters would be able to see online that their ballot never arrived and then request another or vote in person
@@HowtownBut by that time, wouldn't the election be over?
Check your local area. Here, you can check status and if it is lost you can vote in person.
10:33 you guys didn't address this part of the vulnerability, is it really literally just a guy transporting all the ballots in a car? Are there security escorts etc?
@ MelissaKap replied stating that this is an error. In reality there are at least 2-3 people. Good catch!
In IL too, the return bag is physically locked with that lock's serial number recorded. The ballots themselves are also inside of a single plastic bag which also has a sticker seal. So even if only a single person were to return the paper ballots, there are still multiple layers to prevent (or catch) them alternating those ballots.
Watch that part again and look carefully on the passenger seat ;)
6:00 I've been getting that scam, too~ Good thing they only tagged a place I haven't lived in in 3 years.
i just kept looking at the cat behind.
sweet spots🐱: 2:42
great video and amazing little illustrations!
Y'all have such a unique way of presenting these videos!! It feels like I am eavesdropping on a couple of really nerdy friends haha. Keep em coming!
I better get my mail-in ballot in time!!!
Such a good review of all the possible points and the process Thank you True to Howtown Mission
2:56 man even the project 2025 people admitted themselves it is that rare
Great video, once again!
Excellent video as always guys. This could easily tie into understanding of statistics and why sampling is conducted in the manner it is but not sure if anyone would be ready for the math intensity 😂
Can't wait for next video
Really love the animations and illustration look. Shoutout to Marcie LaCerte!
This is so important. Thank you.
The thing about fraud is that we never know 100% of fraud.
Sure, which is why PA uses math and statistics with risk based audits (auditing more the closer the race is) to be sure that the answer is right
@ you can never guarantee an outcome that there’s no fraud, you can’t guarantee a range of fraud. There’s inherent risk, control risk and detection risk. In a system counting millions of votes it’s not logical to assume just 3 cases happened.
@@20burkt1515math like polling? Everyone using statistics don't seem to understand math.
💯
"When I play cards I have to count sometimes
...
you know to make sure I got 7 cards dealt to me..."
Hmmm 🤔🤔🤔
i feel like the postal officer interference with mail ins was maybe the best idea you mentioned? most people probably don't check that their mail in was delivered properly. they just assume it was. the issue i see with this method is that the postal worker won't know who the person voted for until they open the mail. so they would just be guessing. but if it's a person who cares enough to do this they might make good guesses about which neighborhoods mail ins they should try to interfere with...
Great video!! As someone from Germany I always wonder about electoral college and its not-so democtraic approch as you can have a majority but still loose and vice versa. Also to my understanding the lines/zones have been deliberately altered in favor of republicans. Maybe all of this is bs so I would love to get some clarification!
The electoral college was established by the Constitution as a compromise between those who thought the vote of the people should decide the President, and those who thought the President should be chosen by members of Congress. Later on, almost all the states decided their electoral votes would be "winner-take-all", to increase the state's influence on the outcome. The number of electoral votes is proportional to the population for the state, EXCEPT that the minimum number of electoral college votes for a state is 3, which tends to benefit more rural (more Republican) states.
The U.S. is the only democracy in which a candidate for President can get the most popular votes and still lose the election, which happened in 2000 and 2016.
The issue of the district borders affects Congressional elections (specifically for the House of Representatives) rather than the Presidential race. Every 10 years after the census, the states can redraw the borders. If you clump one party's voters into a smaller number of districts, you can limit the overall number of representatives that party has in the House. Both parties have tried to do this, but Republicans were more "successful" at it after the 2010 census because they had more control in State governments and big ones like Texas and Florida. Republicans also have a built-in advantage from the fact that Democratic voters tend to cluster in cities, limiting their geographic spread.
@@Howtown does DC not have 3 electoral college votes by virtue of the 23rd amendment? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-third_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
@@dacheatbot Correct, DC has 3 votes. I'm not sure why they said it has zero
@@dacheatbot whoops yes I misremembered that. thanks! -joss
Wonderful video! Thanks for going in depth with this. When I lived in MA, I worked the 2020/2021 elections and really enjoyed that experience! I learned a lot about the process there, and how hard it would be to "steal" it, so to speak. I love getting some insight into another state's process!
Thanks for the video. I really appreciate having information to counter claims of wide spread voter fraud. Question, though: What is stopping someone from going to a poll pretending to be someone else? I’ve been very pro voter ID laws to prevent this and the video only pointed out that this was caught because the guy walked in twice to the same polling place to pretend to be his son. It seems to me that if you knew someone was not going to vote, you could vote for them and so long as it is not at the same polling place no one would be the wiser. Thanks again!
It happens but occurrence is statistically insignificant.
You'd have to know that they're registered, and which polling place they vote at, and whether they've already voted before at that polling place (if not, ID is required in PA), and be willing to risk legal consequences, for 1 extra vote. So experts in this area are trying to weigh the risk of that happening against the risk of legitimate voters being denied the chance to participate.
@@Howtown At least in IL, you would also have to be able to mimic their signature, and I can tell you from my signature changing over time that they do actually check. So, very non-trivial even in states where you don't have to show ID.
@@Howtown Is US really so averse to having ID Checked at the poll booth. Most countries do it, moreover lot of countries including mine have Voter IDs specifically for election. Why is having an ID a big issue in the US. I assume most citizen would have some kind of national identification?
@@blipblop5757 The US had a period of strong voter suppression during the Jim Crow era with literacy tests, poll taxes, etc being required to vote.
Some people today still see requiring id as a form of voter suppression. Not 100% of citizens have id, and it's disproportionately so with minority races, the elderly, and the poor.
I lov ethat the politicians themselves don't seem to know about this process. Watching this video should be a requirement before you're allowed to become a politician :)
So glad you guys made the point that while the processes in place to ensure integrity of the elections isn't foolproof, the greater and more likely risk here is undermining trust in the process.
Of course one informs the other, but I think if people really understood that they would change how they approach talking about about these issues and concerns, for the better.
Also 8:10 shoutout to the Voting Village at DEFCON!
Very informative. Thanks.
Great to see you guys got a sponsor! Although personally, I like the strategy of putting false info online, to confuse my enemies :P
How about counting non-citizens during the census to get more congressional seats for the state?
The only thing not explained in this video is why it would take more than one day to count the votes and declare the winner in a state like Pennsylvania.
They kind of explain it but indirectly! When they talk about how the vote counts actually go from the polling places to the state, you can kind of see where there's delays there. People have to transport it in their cars then it has to go to a facility. There's people at those facilities that are going to count those things but they have to open up the bags, go through them and you have to remember. There are a lot of polling places there for a lot of bags of votes. It just takes a while!
Incredible work!
Such a great and informative video!! Love it
Thank you thank you thank you
Could you take out someone's mail filled ballot right after they drop it off(somehow get it out of the machine or say you're the person whose job is it to transport it), open it carefully, swap the vote(impossible if the ballot doesn't allow for corrections; I am not American I don't know) and carefully reseal the letter/paper.
I think that would spoil the ballot. I guess you could selectively spoil ballots to harm a particular candidate. But it would be hard for one person to affect many ballots or for many people to keep secret.
The stuff that has a big impact is selectively making it harder for particular demographics to vote, and gerrymandering, which are both legal, but probably shouldn't be.
One weak point that hasn't been talked about is when someone moves from one state to another. The states are supposed to inform the previous state that someone registered to vote in the new state but sometimes the communication doesn't happen. I've seen someone hold up two mail in ballots that were sent to them from two states and I'm not sure if they could have been caught since these measures only protect election integrity within the state. There needs to be more robust audits of interstate election mechanisms
It would be a good idea to audit these things, but you have to remember one thing. The interstate election security is what actually matters right? Because at the top of this video they mentioned that you have to have a permanent address in that state to get a ballot or to get the option to vote. A permanent address is expensive when moving between two states. Yeah, you might say well I could get a PO box. No PO boxes. Don't count as permanent addresses. Okay? Well then I could rent a place that's really cheap for $100 a month and I could do it a month or two before elections that is somewhat possible but most states require 90 days ahead of the election so you'd have to be able to pay even $100 rent 3 months in a row. So you're up to $300. And this is just for one person in one state. So if you need to do this in two places, all the sudden you're paying $600 for one duplicate vote across two states. It's just not a super scalable solution! Now. You could maybe say well. I only need to rent one place but multiple people could be living in it right? Yeah, maybe that's true. So maybe you're getting some economies of scale there. But if you having too many people living in one place, eventually the government's going to start to come around asking questions! The reality is it's just not super feasible on a large scale to do election fraud as long as the State security is pretty strong which it currently is. Also, you have to remember that the US has a large tapestry of states rights stage legislations and a distrust of federal and interconnected systems. So getting cross state line audits is going to be a very challenging thing! But a very interesting problem
Great video
yeah see the problem with analysis is that the "rules" say that they check and double check names/lists there isnt anything in place to make sure that actually happens. There have been a plethora of examples of false addresses and false names getting through the systems.
Most important thing is, the cat is clean at the end of the video
The problem with the presidential elections is that the stakes are too high. We need a more diverse system of checks and balances or more frequent, less significant voting period.
Insightful video! 🙌🏽
Even the HERITAGE FOUNDATION admits that there are only 85 cases of noncitizen voting that happened since 2002-2023. Strategic use of a source and i love it! Another perfect arrow in my arguments quiver.
Great vid!!
as a Pennsylvanian, I can tell you, things get stressful around here around election time. a lot of fighting and yelling in public places. way too many ads, more than anywhere else I've seen
We really devalue emotions until we're using them to validate our policy positions.
What you didn't mention is that election fraud is not unique to one side of the political spectrum or the other. If it can happen, it will happen on both sides. It's not a right, center or left wing problem. It's not an extremist problem. It's just a problem. A very, very small problem that really has a very, very small chance of impacting the overall election in any way.
It's still crazy how the election officials and overseers are all partisan, whether it's balanced or not - In Australia we have an impartial independent electoral commission running the whole show
yeah, most democractic countries have impartial officials. the crazy part is that in the US they aren't just partisan, they're also elected! in the 2018 race to be governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp was the secretary of state overseeing the election _as well as_ the Republican candidate for governor! he got to set the rules for his own election 🙄
How can you really be sure an "independent commission" is truly independent? I'd say its a lot more fair to have objectively paritsan officials from both sides working together.
@@ianism3as did Katie Hobbs
Aqui no Brasil as "feaudes" não são materiais, são c9mporamentais e acontecem através do volume de informações autorizadas e disponibilizados ao grande público que ajudam ou prejudicam cada um dos lados!
Easy. Rent multiple places in multiple states. Use the addresses to register. My co-workers did that in 2020 and asked me to do it too.
So you're admitting to committing voter fraud?
What about the drop boxes?
Cool video, all of these efforts and processes in America for the individual vote not to count at the end.😂😂😂
Channel is lovely y’all- keep it up
Great video! I was wondering where you get your background music? It really adds to the vibes of the vid
Absolutely none of this matters with the Electoral College deciding the outcome at every election. So, can you do a segment on that?
There's a huge vulnerability you overlooked; if you're a member of a party that tends to benefit from lower voter turnout, you can do things to reduce voter turnout. In quite a few states, you can simply contest the right of somebody else to vote, and if they don't address it, they can lose that right. There are certain people in those states who are contesting tens of thousands of voter registrations, because a lot of people, upon receiving a notification that they have to do something to retain their right to vote, just won't get around to it.
And that's before being tricky about picking which people to contest. Certain tendencies in names of demographics likely to vote against your candidate...
I love your cat in the background XD
A lot of examples from Philadelphia, idk if they’re good at catching it, reporting it, or just study bias. 🤔
We have seen cases of these 'impossible' situations during both 2020 and this time. The lack of skepticism here is alarming.
Good to know about the paper backup process, coming from a nation which votes on paper the US's voting machines have seemed unsafe but your video does explain the situation and safeguards better.
Joss and Adam, I love the animations, but can you tone down the static ones that just kind of bounce around? It’s kind of distracting and a bit annoying. Also, I wish this video could be mandatory viewing for all these nuts that just want to scream voter fraud without evidence.
Oh great premise!
Great video, though I personally wish there had been more on the voting village.
I don't mind watching a couple of ads before the actual video starts.
Here's a weird hypothetical this video has me wondering about: if you must surrender a mail in ballot in order to be eligible to vote in person, could an election official be bribed to send out a large number of mail-in ballots to specific people who did not ask for them?
This would perhaps trip up some people who had no intention of voting by mail because they might go to vote in person on election day. And because they might be uninformed on the procedures surrounding mail-in voting they might show up to the voting place empty handed - unable to turn over their mail-in ballots because they didn't realize they had to surrender them.
Many would probably go home and get them, but some might be annoyed/ disadvantaged enough to skip voting that year because of the hassle. If enough people don't vote because of this, it might influence certain close elections.
if it was a large number of ballots, you'd get a bunch of reports of people saying "I didn't request a ballot but they sent one" and then when they checked, there wouldn't be a record of the request (which requires drivers license or social security number). The poll workers would have the voter fill out a "provisional ballot" to keep on hand pending the investigation.
In Chicago, if your ballot is lost in the mail, you can vote on election day and certify you haven't sent it in. I think this depends on your local policies.
Something similar was discovered today in Colorado. Only it looks like someone got a hold of a handful of mail-in ballots filled them out and mailed the ballots back. Through these were flagged in two different ways. One process caught some of the filled in ballots when the signatures did not match the voters signature. The rest were caught when the legal voters contacted the election commission about not receiving their ballot after they got a notification their ballot had been received. Now that the election commission has caught these they are able to do a more detailed examination to see if there are any others. As of now there are just 12 ballots from one neighborhood.
@@pikapomelothat just undoes the narrative of the video
@@mikewilliams6025 I'm not really following your comment.
At a high level, the point of the video as I see it is that people running elections have been doing it for a long time and encountered many of the edge cases and found reasonable solutions.
The original comment asked if the unrequested mail in ballot would be a blocker. How Town showed one way it wouldn't. I provided a specific example of how Chicago accounts for this. Even if you get a ballot in the mail, it might get damaged or the tracking data ruined. So in Chicago you can track if your ballot was delivered to you and also if it was accepted. If it gets lost one way, you just fill in an in person ballot and they invalidate the mail in one if it ever shows up.
Do you guys have input on this conversation that starlink had a hand in voter fraud?
It's easy, just go into the county that always votes blue or red, then "lose" the ballots of whichever party you don't like, it doesn't matter that its uncounted, you know who often wins and even if they know the lost em, they can't do anything about it.
As someone from the UK I dispute that hand counting votes manually wouldn't work. It works fine, we do it all the time.
It's complicated (I grew up in the US, but have lived in the UK for the last 36 years). American election papers contain a LOT. Not only federal races, but also local (State, county, city and sometimes all the way down to roles such as sanitation superintendent, police chief, library board members and the like). In addition, there may well be a load of local or statewide referenda - the Portland, Oregon ballot is four pages, and includes roles such as 'Soil and Water Conservation District', 'Urban Flood Safety and Water Quality District', mayor and various referenda such as 'shall charter be amended to delete vague, archaic language ...'. Hand counting all those would be a mammoth task.
I am a dual citizen, so I've voted in the UK - and there tends to be only one (occasionally two) elections at a time. Gotta say, though, here in the UK, we have the joys of novelty candidates - it makes everything so much more entertaining (Count Binface for MP!)
There are a couple of concerns: one is that error rates are about twice as high with hand counting (though the error rate is still pretty low) www.npr.org/2022/10/07/1126796538/voting-explainer-hand-counting-ballots-accuracy-cost
The second is that US elections are bigger (158 million vs 28 million votes) and more complicated than UK elections - there's usually more on the ballot. My ballot this year had 20 odd things to vote on. All that adds up to more time/resources needed to count the ballots ... and the longer it takes to get results, the more confusion and distrust there is. That's why a lot of states opt for machine counting backed up by hand-counted audits.
I think you highly underestimate how many offices the US elects at one time. Often a ballot will have up to 20+ votes on it.
The UK general elections have extremely simple ballots in relation.
@@Me-ui1zy I live in an area of the US where we vote whether to retain judges. There can be 75+ judges to vote on, in addition to all the other stuff!
My ballot this year had 74 items.
I LOVE YOUR GUYS' VIDEO YEYY
1:36 Route 666? The root of all evil?
I'm a non-American viewer. Subject generally doesn't concerned me but I watched the whole video for the cat. What is the cat's name? :)
Rowdy!
That philadephia guy looks like Nate Silver with facial hair
love the cat in the background
Our elections are very secure. It's really hard to steal by voter fraud. I have heard some people complain that we have to do the things we do and that we can't just download an app and cast a vote. However convenient that would be, the method we have in place is far better at ensuring a fair election and I would never want to sacrifice that. Excellent video.
This is a great video. However, i suspect the people that need to see this either aren't watching, or are brainwashed enough to tell you that you're wrong. The machine is full of too many bad actors making bad faith arguments to enormous audiences.
You think the communication system has been compromised, but that the election system couldn't be? Such an attitude is a vulnerability in the system.
I learned about this channel from Middlebrow podcast
I hope u release the Venezuela video here too
share everywhere with everyone
Putin be like
I am a non-U.S. citizen, so please pardon me if I misrepresented things, but I have some questions.
13:03
If you are a relative, shouldn't it be fairly less difficult to know the Social Security number or driver's license of someone you know close?
13:28
Can't the outer envelope itself also have multiple copies by someone and stuffed into the Dropbox?
I’m certainly not as well researched as the people in the video but as a US citizen I can try to answer. I would imagine that for your first point although you might have access to those things for a dead relative, like they said that would probably only equate to a very small number of ballots that would be very unlikely to actually change the result of any election, even local ones, so most people would probably not consider it worth the risk of jail time (even if they did still attempt it they also stated in the video that voter registrations are also often checked against death records so it would be hard to get a mail in ballot in the first place).
For the second point, they stated that each bar code is unique to the individual so if they encountered the same bar code multiple times then they would know the votes are fraudulent.
Hope that helps!
okay Leverage
Idk why but thank you for making Oklahoma all red :)
Nice straw man argument!Let’s conveniently not talk about Wayne county MI 2020! 😂 Trump2028 MAGA
The claim of mass voter fraud in Wayne County, Michigan, during the 2020 U.S. presidential election is a reference to allegations raised primarily by supporters of former President Donald Trump. Wayne County, which includes Detroit, was a focal point of these claims due to its strong Democratic voting pattern and the large number of votes cast for Joe Biden.
What They May Be Referencing:
1. Unbalanced Poll Books: Some critics alleged discrepancies between the number of voters recorded in poll books and the number of ballots counted, particularly in Detroit.
2. Mail-in Ballots: There were accusations that mail-in ballots were fraudulently submitted or mishandled.
3. Ballot “Dumps”: Claims circulated about large, late-night batches of ballots being added to the vote totals for Joe Biden.
4. Observers and Transparency: Allegations were made that Republican poll watchers were prevented from observing the vote count or treated unfairly.
5. Dominion Voting Machines: Some claims alleged that voting machines in Michigan flipped votes from Trump to Biden.
Was There Evidence of Voter Fraud?
• Investigations and Audits: Numerous investigations, recounts, and audits in Michigan, including a bipartisan canvassing of the vote and a review by the Republican-led Michigan Senate Oversight Committee, found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
• Unbalanced Precincts: The minor discrepancies in poll books (fewer than 450 votes in Detroit) were attributed to clerical errors, not fraud, and were not significant enough to affect the election outcome.
• Lawsuits: Multiple lawsuits challenging the election results in Michigan, including Wayne County, were dismissed due to lack of evidence.
• Certification: Wayne County’s results were certified by bipartisan canvassers, despite initial reluctance from some Republican members.
Independent Findings:
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) called the 2020 election the “most secure in American history.” The Department of Justice, under Attorney General William Barr, also stated they found no evidence of widespread fraud that would have affected the election outcome.
Conclusion:
While allegations of fraud in Wayne County gained traction among some groups, these claims were thoroughly investigated and consistently debunked by election officials, courts, and independent reviews. The claims are now widely regarded as conspiracy theories unsupported by credible evidence.
I guess preparation for plan D began