[js2]

Fraud isn't impossible, just difficult to do on a scale that would matter in most elections. In NC, an election had to be redone because someone working for the GOP candidate had fraudulently collected absentee ballots (from registered Democrats I think), preventing those ballots from being counted or possibly tampered with them, and it was a close race.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-north-caroli...

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746800630/north-carolina-gop-...

So obviously the voter needs to be careful to place the mail-in ballot correctly into the USPS and then the USPS has to be trusted to deliver the ballots correctly.

Beyond that, the mail-in ballots are checked against the registered voter rolls. So the state has to maintain clean voter rolls.

But this is not much different really from in-person voting. In theory, I could go to my local polling location and claim to be one of my neighbors, sign their name, and take their vote. They'd only notice if they showed up to vote later. But I'd likely get caught if they'd already voted. Or maybe the poll worker would recognize me. There are lots of scenarios you could imaging getting away with a handful of fraudulent votes. But it would hard to be able to do anything significant enough to affect the outcome of most elections.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mail-in-ballot-voter-fraud...

[hef19898]

One thing I really don't get is the voter registration thing in the US. All European countries I know of simply require residents to register their primary and secondary residencies. You get voting papers to your primary residency. That's it. No registration as a voter, no party affiliation. You can be a party memebyer, but that information isn't public.

That system works just fine.

[amanaplanacanal]

In the US only citizens can vote, but not resident aliens. And there is no general registration of residences outside of what is needed for voting.

[hef19898]

Same in Europe. With the notable exception of local elections, like mayors and so on. Thing is, you cannot purge a voter role, as the voter role is the residents role. But then we have ID requirements.