[thu2111]

That's not the type of problem that usually happens with postal voting. Intercepting votes like that on a large scale would be indeed hard.

But what people do get caught doing quite regularly and not just in the USA are things like:

1. Going door to door and giving people blank ballots, pressuring people to fill them in, right in front of them. As a 'helpful service'.

2. Dominant members of the families taking the ballots from family members and filling them all in themselves. This gets reported a lot in various ethnic minority areas in the UK, for example, where the father is traditionally dominant.

3. Ballots being destroyed or not delivered in swing areas where certain sub-regions are known to be strongly pro one candidate or another.

It's good to hear that some places let you check if your ballot was received, but almost by definition, for that to work you need a lot of people to do that kind of check and then publicly broadcast their findings. In an environment where social media is suppressing discussion of the possibility of voter fraud and the media is polarised, it's not so clear how people would do that reliably, even if enough checked in the first place. And a lot of places you can't easily check - I know I can't in my elections!

As for Trump accusing others of cheating, conservatives in multiple countries have been talking about the problems of postal vote fraud for a long time. This is not new, they care because when it is uncovered it always seems to be tipping the vote for the left. Trump in particular shouldn't be under suspicion here because he has been strongly encouraging his supporters to vote in person, where fraud is much harder to pull off: it's his opponents that strongly encouraged postal voting despite knowing that postal voting is less confidence-inspiring than the ballot box.

[rhinoceraptor]

> he has been strongly encouraging his supporters to vote in person

He also attempted to sabotage the USPS, and cast doubts on mail-in ballots as a whole, with the obvious intent of suppressing opposition voters, and/or having reason to question the election after the fact.

The only party with anything to gain from suppressing voters are the Republicans. Look at the map of states that didn't ratify the 24th amendment. They've repeatedly made false claims of voter fraud, and engaged in voter intimidation and voter suppression.

And just this election, the Republicans put up fraudulent, illegal mail-in ballot drop boxes.

[hiram112]

> The only party with anything to gain from suppressing voters are the Republicans.

> And just this election, the Republicans put up fraudulent, illegal mail-in ballot drop boxes.

So which one is it?

[dragonwriter]

> Trump in particular shouldn't be under suspicion here because he has been strongly encouraging his supporters to vote in person, where fraud is much harder to pull off:

That...doesn't follow.

If I was planning massive mail-in voter fraud/sabotage/suppression, I'd probably be overly sensitive to the possibility that my opponent would also do what they could in that direction (or, in the case of unfocussed sabotage efforts, that my voters’ ballotd would be at risk from my own efforts), which would make me more likely to encourage my voters to vote in person, so that only my opponent’s votes would be at risk.

So what you are pointing to, inasmuch as it says anything relevant, makes Trump more suspicious, not less.

[thu2111]

Isn't that a "if she floats she's a witch" type argument?