Thread by @rickhasen

Of all the ridiculous schemes that have been floated by the President or AG Barr for how mail-in ballot fraud could affect the election, the possibility of a foreign entity swaying election by mailing fraudulent absentee ballots is the most ludicrous. It defies common sense. /1

https://twitter.com/Joe_the_L/status/1288192305137164288

To begin with, mail-in ballots are very hard to duplicate on the fly. Each jurisdiction has their own ballot format, form of paper, and races differ for voters by their respective districts. Ballot envelopes also often contain coding that helps election officials track them. /2

Ballot forms must contain certain information that must be verified, like a signature, identification information, and sometimes witness requirements. These would all have to be faked, and done in a way to escape attention. /3

Imagine if a foreign government got voter registration information, miraculously faked the ballot form, paper, tracking information, etc., and then faked signatures. Voters who requested a mail-in ballot would find out someone else voted their ballots. /4

The foreign government would have to do this at scale to produce thousands of votes in even the closest swing state to try to change the outcome. With everyone watching and many states allowing voters to track their ballots this becomes impossible. /5

When we've seen small-scale attempts at absentee ballot fraud (such as the Republican candidate manager's attempt to tamper with ballots in 2018 #NC09 race and the current issues in Paterson, NJ), they are detected, and they involve tens or hundreds of ballots at most. /6

And by the way the same guy accused of fraud to help the Republican candidate in 2018 in #NC09 was accused of doing so in 2016 too. North Carolina officials notified the feds who did NOTHING because they were looking for small scale voter fraud to please Trump /7

Details about how federal officials looked the other way on ballot tampering in North Carolina in 2016 appear in my book, #ElectionMeltdown. /8

In 2020, EVERYONE is going to be watching absentee balloting very carefully, in part because of reckless claims of fraud raised by Trump about mail-in balloting. I expect we will see reports of lots of small-scale things, but no evidence of fraud that could affect election. /9

For example, there will no doubt be ballots sent to some voters who are dead or otherwise no longer eligible to vote. There will be ballots that will be found abandoned or misdirected because a voter did not receive them. But that's not proof of fraudulently voted ballots. /10

And if anyone tries to mess with absentee ballots, you can bet that the media and prosecutors will be all over it. Doing this requires a conspiracy among a lot of people or messing with a lot of people's ballots. This gets noticed. /11

But foreign government massive interference with mail-in voting? No way. The opposite of "common sense." Instead, I suspect we will see foreign entities like Russia amplifying Trump's false statements about vote by mail fraud to try to delegitimize election. /12

And I suspect that the biggest danger of absentee ballots is not fraud but that many voters will be inadvertently disenfranchised when they vote by mail for the first time and so something like forgetting to seal or sign the envelope. cc @ElectProject. /13

Mail in ballots are far from perfect and rolling out push for vote by mail in the midst of a pandemic without adequate funding is a big problem. But given health risks, many voters will find it safest way to vote. We need BOTH safe in-person and mail voting for 2020. /14

THAT's common sense and that's what AG Barr should be pushing for instead of amplifying ridiculous and dangerous conspiracy theories about vote-by-mail that threaten the legitimacy of the 2020 elections. 15/15

https://twitter.com/rickhasen/status/1294058001767178240?s=20