My friend is reporting it.

This can happen if the envelopes get damp, but they should send you a replacement. Otherwise, someone could swap out your ballot and then just tape it closed.

Same thing happened to me in Pennsylvania. Will be watching very carefully on the ballot status emails to make sure it's still accepted.

I'd call your local TV station or newspaper. Let them investigate and publicize it, and if it's all aboveboard at least it'll be out in the open.

And the Republicans will scream about how democrats are using provisional ballots to vote twice. They'll try to cast doubt on any non-favorable election result, and they'll have the provisional votes as proof. The fact that it doesn't mean the vote was counted twice will get lost in the noise, and it'll be one more BS piece of "evidence" to cast the election as illegitimate.

I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, I think you're doing the right thing. But we're just in a very fucked up place politically right now.

If worse comes to worst*

cut it open and tape it back up

Just to be real, they really don't care about the popular vote. They care about the electoral vote. And even that isn't totally true. They care about the electoral victory. They long ago abandoned democracy; they don't care about having democratically granted power. They just want the power.

A little felony by blacking out a mail-in ballot is literally the least they're ready, willing, and able to do to win.

I continue to be incredibly frustrated by how little democrats have done to counter the fraud, voter suppression, constitutionally dubious laws, takeover of state election boards and volunteers, and armed, volunteer "ballot watchers" the Republicans have deployed.

The republican "ground game" that extends beyond simply GOTV efforts and campaigning and into the wide-ranging and widespread strategies and tactics to literally dismantle and inhibit the democratic process has been met with very little resistance by the democrats. Somehow they're going to be blindsided by this, cry foul retroactively, and then be hamstrung trying to play defense from behind. Wilfully ignorant, short-sighted, and incredibly dangerous idiocy for something so fundamentally important.

The democrats don't have to be unethical because the Republicans are, but they should have been being proactive and serious about countering these attacks on the democratic process. Instead the approach seems to be sticking their fingers firmly in their ears and going "lalalalala."

There's a neat post I came across some time ago showing how few votes can still win the electoral college.

Comment link

Direct link to website

Turns out, though unlikely, it is possible to win the election with less than 25% of votes through the magic of the electoral college and disproportionate representation.

They're the ones always claiming there's fraud. They must know something we don't.

Excellent point. I alerted my friend to your post. I don’t have the envelope, they just sent me the picture. They go to bed early but I’ll update you in the morning.

Thank you for the info! My friend called and you are correct. I edited the post to reflect this information!

Agreed. Just commented with a reference to the recommendations for blacking it out.

For mail-ins, yeah, you sign it to do the final "I authorize this document to be my vote".

If you don't authorize it, it's not legally your vote.

For mail in balloting at least in my state you sign the return envelope NOT the ballot itself.

I've always had to sign my vote by mail ballot envelope in CA. They keep a signature on file from when you last registered to absentee (not vote at your polling place) vote and compare the two to see if someone else is trying to vote in your name.

something you have to remember about the US is that while it's a democracy, all the democratic practices were started in the 1800s, often with explicit intention to negate the votes of some discriminated group

You sign the envelope that contains the ballot. That way, an election worker can compare the signature on the envelope to your signature on file.

This is how they make sure that someone didn't steal the ballot from your mailbox and fill it out for you.

Once the signature is verified, the envelope is opened and the anonymous ballot inside is removed and stored with all the others. When they are counted, there will be no way to tell who filled out each ballot.

In order for a mail in ballot to be valid, the person must sign the envelope.

Yep, we have the same system in the UK. In fact, the envelope looks almost exactly the same so they might even be printed by the same company.

You get two envelopes (one big, one small), a postal voting statement, and a ballot paper.

The actual ballot paper just has a list of options for you to put your X against; there's no personally identifiable information on it. Once you've filled it out you seal it in the small envelope.

You then fill in the voting statement (it has your name and address on it so they can cross your name off as voted, and you sign it so they can check your signature matches the one on file) and both that and the sealed ballot go in the big envelope. That way your vote is still private because they check the vote is valid in one step and then add your ballot to a pile to be counted with the others in a second step, at which point it's anonymous.

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/...

The key point is that if it's not signed, it gives them an excuse to throw it away.

Do that to enough people and you end up with a big problem. The uncounted votes could swing the election, or you get a messy court case where some judges step in and basically decide the election on their own, or who knows what else.

At a minimum, it's sets the stage for chaos. And from the chaos can emerge a chaotic outcome.

just imagine gremlins running around in your election system at every level. thats pretty much whats happening

I could be mistaken, but most places check your signature against the voter roll. If your signature doesn't match, then they'll ask for an ID. At least that's how it was where I volunteered in 2020. This is done before you get your ballot. You don't actually sign the ballot itself.

I don't believe there is, and if there was, it could be used for some really nefarious purposes!

I don’t know if all states have it, but Virginia does have vote history on their voter registration page. It doesn’t show what your vote was, but does show that it was received and counted.

Maryland sent me an email last time that my vote had been counted, but not for who.

If you mailed in a ballot then there should be a way to confirm it was received, but there should NOT be a way to see who you voted for. Just like they can confirm that you voted in person, but again can not tell who you voted for when you showed up to vote.

Typically when you vote by mail you receive a ballot plus two envelopes. You fill out the ballot and put it in the inner envelope that should contain no markings as to whose ballot it belongs to. This is put inside the second envelope that should have your contact information (my state uses a barcode for this) and that you have to sign.

When the city/town clerk receives the ballot they look up your voter registration & confirm the signature on file matches the signature on the envelope. They then check off in their records that you voted by mail on that day. They take the inner envelope out of the outer envelope and add it to the other pile of envelopes they’ve received. At some later point they open those envelopes and count the ballots, but have no way of associating a given ballot back with the person who mailed it in.

If you then try to go vote in person on Election Day (or somebody tries to impersonate you) then their records will show you already voted and you won’t be allowed to vote again.

My county in Florida allows you to show your vote was counted. Damned if I don't check every single time.

My county in Washington state has a website where you can check the status. I even get text or email notifications for the status. “We received your ballot”, “the signature was verified”, “your vote has been counted”.

There was even a problem with my signature once and all I had to do was log in and verify it and it was counted.

My California county sends me a text and email.

My friend reported it to the election board, but doesn’t want to report it to the news. I can’t make him and I don’t live in Virginia. If anyone wants to share this, my friend nor I will be opposed.

Thanks for this information. I alerted my friend. I’ll update the post if you are correct.

Thank you for the info! My friend called and you are correct. I edited the post to reflect this information!

Ughhhhhhhhh. Sorry, but I need to rant.

Those fuckers are so fucking sensationalist. They use the same simple-mined tactics as right-wing propaganda mills. A 20 minute video of theirs could be condensed into 5 without those tactics and actually do far more to push forward their "law based coverage".

I quickly put them in the "not worth the sensationalist propaganda" bucket after watching a handful of their videos

Curious about what was crossed out. We could probably tell with a better photo.

They aren't going to tamper with ballots in predominantly conservative areas. They'll focus their efforts on more left leaning areas.

Get this paid spam out of here.