COUNTER-POINT: Concerns about mail-in ballots and voter fraud

The opinion published in the June 3 issue of the Gazette, titled ”Dangerous Rhetoric,” is what she wrote about mail voting criticizing Nancy Churchill’s concerns that vote-by-mail leads to voter fraud shows Ms. Vaughn either does not recognize the issues with vote-by-mail or chooses to ignore them.

The days of the secret ballot are gone with vote-by-mail. First, there is nothing to prevent the person who opens and counts the ballots from looking at the name on the mail on the envelope and then looking at their ballot.

The larger loss of secrecy is when political operatives can go door-to-door gathering ballots and in the process intimidate and, if necessary, threaten voters if they do not mark their ballot in the manner directed by the ballot gatherer.

Loss of secrecy also occurs when friends and relatives can put pressure on someone to vote a certain way.

There will be cases of paying voters to let their ballot gatherer mark their ballots.

Ballot gatherers will concentrate on obtaining the ballots of people with dementia or other mental deficiencies and people who do not know the qualifications of the candidates or the ballot issues so the ballot gatherer can mark their ballots.

Ballots of deceased people will be voted (for which ballots for 14 deceased individuals were cast long after then voters died in 2020).

There is a bill pending in the U.S House of representatives to make ballot gathering illegal for all federal elections. All of this will lead to mass voter corruption and fraud.

The secret ballot needs to be restored and people required to go to the polling place to cast their vote in the privacy of the voting booth. Absentee ballots can be permitted for people who truly cannot go to the polls. If a person can go to the grocery store, a fast-food restaurant, a movie, or any other activity outside their home there is no reason they cannot go to the polling place to vote.

Another major voting issue is the process of registering to vote. The registration process must verify the identity and citizenship of the person registering to vote. There will be millions of immigrants who have entered the U.S. during President Biden’s presidency by the time of the federal elections in 2022. How many hundreds of thousands of these immigrants will be permitted to vote in 2022?