[js2]

Purely from a logistical standpoint, it would be difficult to commit voter fraud in large enough numbers to make a difference in most elections, and get away with it.

An individual here or there might manage to vote more than once by, say, impersonating someone they know won't vote (deceased, moved away, etc), but that's unlikely to make a difference.

To make a difference, it would need to be coordinated and large scale. So how do you round up a sufficient number of people, convince them all to vote illegally, and then keep quiet about it? How do you get them to all the different polling places? How do you ensure that whomever they are voting in place of on the voter rolls is both eligible to vote and hasn't already voted?

Now I'm only going by my voting district. Here, you either absentee vote, early vote, or vote in your precinct. Regardless, you have to give your name, address and signature. They then check you against the voter rolls and record that you've voted. Presumably if I tried to vote again, they'd know I'd already recorded a vote, when and where.

To prevent conflicts, you'd have to in addition commit large scale registration fraud.

Maybe I'm just not sufficiently clever, but whenever I've thought through this, I haven't figure out how it could work.

[andrewla]

It seems unlikely to be able to get the scale required without someone spilling the beans or accidentally getting caught. But things like voter intimidation and vote buying are illegal and we have structural remedies to (attempt to) prevent those. Of 9 million voters in Texas, only 16,000 did not present ID [1] and had to fill out affidavits. I'm unconvinced that the harm of voter id laws is sufficient to balance the peace of mind that we would get by closing up a potential form of voter fraud.

[1] http://electionlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2019-01/fraga...

[js2]

So election security theatre? Color me not convinced. We should be doing everything possible to increase voter turnout in the U.S.

I'll make you a deal. Let's do away with voting machines that don't produce a physical receipt, make voting day a national holiday, and setup automatic voter registration. As part of all that, I'm willing to concede a feel good voter ID measure.

[andrewla]

Hey, if you and I were in charge of things, we'd get stuff done.

Voting machines and physical receipt, times a million.

Voting day a national holiday -- I think it's a mixed blessing given that this is a burden on families, and I'm not sure what exactly a nation holiday entails (restaurants and stores are open on various national holidays, for example, so I'm not sure that all voters would benefit). I'd be willing to give it a try and measure the effects. Weekend voting seems a little easier to manage for a similar effect.

Automatic voter registration I'm not as familiar with; it looks like it's an expansion of motor voter laws, which seems pretty reasonable. If you're a living person eligible to vote you should not really have to do anything except show up. I guess you have to specify a party for states that have party affiliated primaries, but I'd be in favor of making primaries a private function of political parties rather than making them government run.

I'd also be in favor of mandating simplified ballots (the ballots in New York are organized by party rather than candidate, which makes them a mess) and requiring that states distribute a voters guide that enumerates all the ballot options, with statements and candidate information and full text of ballot measures if applicable (Washington state had this when I lived there, and living in New York it's like trying to pull teeth to figure out what they hell your ballot is even going to look like, and ballot measures, forget it -- even getting the full text is often nearly impossible, all you get is the executive summary, no statements for or against or the full text).

[js2]

So we agree on the goals. I like your evidence-based approach to policy making and additional suggestions. I may have been a bit rash with some of my suggestions and appreciate your counter points.

How do we get this done?