[jerf]

"(It didn't!)"

How do you know?

And moreover, why should I know that?

Elections have no purpose if nobody trusts the results afterwards. That dominates all other concerns about elections, because if you don't have that, your election with all the other desirable characteristics is still just so much wasted time.

[kevingadd]

Assuming ballots were modified is kind of a weird stance to take, isn't it? I mean, you're welcome to assume it, but we don't have many historical cases of it happening until recently. It'd be one thing to assume it by default in every state if we knew there was a long history of it happening everywhere... instead we seem to be treating the possibility as an excuse for making it harder for citizens to vote. Weird how that works.

We could always verify the ballots after the fact if you're really concerned that every absentee ballot is being forged.

[jerf]

"Assuming ballots were modified is kind of a weird stance to take, isn't it?"

No, it's perfectly sensible stance to take. The stakes are enormous and the idea that everyone's just so peachy-keen on fair play that we don't have to structure the system to be robust against hostile modification is refuted merely by stating the case. Just bring up whoever are your political bogeymen and ask yourself if they're that moral. The answer is no, obviously. They're the bad guys.

(Besides, didn't we just spend two years agreeing that the Russians were deeply involved with our elections in all sorts of nefarious ways? Now suddenly elections are all totally safe and anyone who questions it is obviously racist and just wants to keep the brown people from voting. You'll pardon me if I can't keep up with all the shifts in the Official Opinions. I'm sure no Russians have looked at our remote ballots and thought about what they could do with it. Or whomever else you like.)

In addition to the first-order security concerns around getting a fair ballot count, there's also the second-order concerns that elections must not just be fair, but have all the appearance of being fair. They don't appear fair when the ballots are filled in, and then disappear from the pipeline for arbitrary periods of time, only to re-appear somewhere else. Even if the system is stipulated to be entirely fair, when the loser (who could be the Good Guys, you know, because obviously the Bad Guys are waaay more likely to cheat than the Good Guys) says "Hey, the vote may have been manipulated!", how do you prove them right or wrong?

Personally, I have my own conspiracy theory which is that it rather suits our Powers that Be that the increasing number of absentee ballots and similar voting "options" makes the elections easier to forge, and citing "oh, what if poor suffering people don't get to vote?" is a rather convenient cudgel for them to pick up and hit anyone who wants to ensure security in voting with.

[kevingadd]

The fact that these necessary options for making the vote accessible might be exploited does not justify getting rid of them. Many, many people cannot or will not get to a polling booth, especially given how many unreasonable constraints our government puts on voting.

It's simply not acceptable to sacrifice accessibility on the altar of 'election integrity', especially when we don't have enough evidence to prove it's necessary.

I agree that making elections not only fair but visibly fair is important. If anything, lowering accessibility like this might reduce faith in elections.

I'm not arguing in favor of e-voting or un-validated ballots here. It's simply unreasonable to disenfranchise that many people on what is basically a (in all fairness to you, very plausible) conspiracy theory. We have too much of that going on in 2019 as-is.

[fzeroracer]

The entire point is that identity fraud is hardly any issue in elections. That's why, to use your own terms, 'the powers that be' usually are in favor of stringent voter ID requirements. They can disenfranchise entire groups of people without being afraid of having to do more unsavory things which could potentially get them caught committing fraud like in say...North Carolina.

After all, it's not fraud if it's law. How convenient if the law only affects people that vote for the opposite party, too. Security is in many ways used as a buzzword. Not in attempt to actually improve election security, but to appeal to people's fears of illegal immigrants somehow showing up in the millions to vote illegally and what not.