Q&A of the Day – How Secure Are Vote By Mail Ballots?

The fact remains it’s still best to vote in person, whether that’s early or on Election Day.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Well, I'm going to question modest answers to questions you
won't here anywhere else. The Q and A of the
day reaction from our government to Brian Mushow, I don't
get that. Yeah. Today's Q and A. How secure are
vote by mail ballots? How secure are they? This is
brought to you by Melissa and Ashes check Mark collections.

(00:22):
Each day I feature a listener question that is submitted
by one of these methods. You may email me Brian
Mudd at iHeartMedia dot com, end me up on social
at Brian mud Radio. You may also use the iHeartRadio
talkback feature. Just go to WJNO or via Patriot inside
of the iHeartRadio app. Follow us once you get there.
Once you do, look for that little microphone button, see it,
tap it. You may lay down a message right there,

(00:44):
maybe for a future Q and A. Today's uned is
this at Brian mud Radio? Dropbox fires across the country?
Ballots falling off a truck in day? Isn't this why
people shouldn't be voting by mail unless they can help it?
How many of these votes are gone with vote who
will never know if their votes are counted? Okay, so yeah,
I mean it just wouldn't be an election cycle in

(01:05):
South Florida if everything was seamless. What it so? Yeah,
while Florida has gone from being exhibit a of how
not to run elections due to persistent failures primarily in
Broward and Palm Beach County, to the example of how
every state should run elections in recent years, we've just
seen again that human er can still play a role

(01:27):
in creating election integrity questions. But what's occurred with reports
of arson at dropbox locations in various locations across the
country and what happened Monday night in Miami Dade are
not both related to vote by mail ballots, So just
kind of bring you up to speed if you're not
aware of the details. So, yes, Monday evening in Cutler Bay,

(01:50):
a box of ballots was found in the road near
the South Day Government Center. As we came to learn,
the ballots were not vote by mail ballots, but rather
paper copies of early votes that had already been tabulated.
Under Florida law, each ballot is to have a paper
backup that could be counted in the event of a recount.
The election worker, who has since been fired, was transporting

(02:14):
the paper backups from an early voting location to the
government building when they fell off his truck. As Miami
Dade Supervisor of Elections Christina White said, those ballots were
already tabulated, so those actually became the backup record for
the election. These results have already been captured, So I
want any voter that voted at that location to know

(02:35):
that their votes are already in the system. They will
be uploaded on election night, and they should feel confident
in the overall system. So that incident did not involve
vote by mail ballots, as is the case with the
dropbox arson issues in other states. But about the broader
point of vote by mail ballot safety and best practices. First,

(02:57):
here's to look at what the options are for all voters.
But casting a vote by mail ballot, you can mail
it in, you can drop it off at a dropbox
at a Supervisor's of Elections office. You can drop it
off at a dropbox at at early voting sites or
at your precinct on election day. Now, obviously, dropping off

(03:17):
a ballot eliminates one of the potential points of failure.
As for tracking your ballot, The Florida Election Division of
Elections website has a feature that allows you to track
your vote by mail ballot, and incidentally, each of the
local election supervisors in their website they do have that
as well. The ballot tracks. It is possible to ensure
that your vote is tabulated if you choose to track it,

(03:39):
and I would recommend that anybody is voted by mail
do so. That takes us to the point being made
today about not voting by mail unless one doesn't have
another option. I think you're absolutely onto something. Now. The
factor remains it is still best to vote in person,
whether that's early or on election day. A SETI conduct

(04:00):
several years ago by the ACLU found mailed in ballots
how many times more likely not to be tabulated than
votes that are cast in person? How much more likely
are you not to have your ballot correctly tabulated if
you fill everything out, put it in a mailbox, and

(04:22):
I'm done, I see Joel, I'm gonna say, wonder two
or three times? Okay? Ten? You are ten times more
likely to have your ballot rejected if you mail it
in as opposed to actually being there to vote in person.
And by the way, I mean, it's not a lot

(04:43):
of people go down the path of see I knew
it conspiracy acts. It's really not that kind of thing
almost ever. What it is primarily errors made by voters.
The most common rejections happen from people voters who just
forget to sign their ballot or they have mismatch match signatures.
For example, maybe your signatures change over the past fifteen years,

(05:07):
but you haven't updated it. That kind of thing, and
so then there's a question in an issue and you're
not there to address it. In total, an average of
one percent. One percent is the number of vote by
mail ballots historically have not been tabulated because they didn't
arrive to election supervisors in time or because the user

(05:33):
errors that have come up, like what I just mention
was signatures. So that's a big number of votes. By
the way, in Florida, an average of twenty thousand ballots
plus each presidential election cycle are rejected. That's larger than
the winning margin and some of our statewide contest historically,
let alone the potential impact in local elections. So yes,

(05:55):
the best practice is to vote in person when possible,
But for those who need to vote by mail, well,
the best practice is to track a ballot status online
to ensure that it is tabulated, and then if you
see it's not, get in touch and figure out what
the next step is. As we're now only five days
away from election day, the USPS has already recommended ballots

(06:16):
having been mailed prior to today. So at this point,
if you still have a vote by mail ballot and
you haven't mailed it yet, their recommendation is not to
go and stick it in the mailbox today. It's actually
to take it with you to a voting location. And
by the way, at that point, you can go one
of two ways. You can just drop it off, or
you can actually have it canceled and then just vote
in persons. That's an option in Florida as well.