We here in the USA vote using a secret ballot. That is to say, after we vote, no one knows who we voted for. While this is true individually, it is not true in groups. We turn our votes in by precinct. And while no one can tell who I voted for, they can know who the precinct voted for.

It is mostly by necessity. I mean, while we want our votes to be kept private, we want then to be counted. When counting by precincts, we can verify that there are exactly so many people who voted in my precinct and for whom. If they are not accounted for by precinct, it would make it very easy to have unfair elections.

To be sure, it has been said, he who counts the votes wins the election. To prevent this from coming true, every vote is counted at a local level. The totals are counted by total ballots and by totals for each candidate. The total votes counted should agree with the total number of voters. The total votes for each candidate should agree with the total number of votes.

If this method is followed carefully, then fraud ought to be easy to see. I mean, if there are a hundred votes, fifty for each candidate, then there out not be a hundred and five votes in the precinct. On the other hand, there out not be 98 votes.

There are three hitches. First, folks voting outside their precinct. It happens frequently. Although illegal, it generally does not create too much of a problem. The numbers simply aren’t significant. Moreover, as long as the person votes only once in one precinct, the spirit of the law prevails, at least in general part of the election. It can throw off local elections so we ought not do it.

The problem does become significantly worse when many people do it in multiple precincts, which allows them to vote multiple times. Not only illegal by the letter of the law, but very much illegal by the spirit of the law. If something like this happens in mass, it can throw off local, state, and national elections. It is difficult to catch as there are few effective ways to catch it.

It is why we use registration. It is why we should be more careful with our registrations. First, it should be required to register two months in advance of voting. It permits, if they will, cross checking between precincts, counties and states. If someone is registered in two or more places, their vote should not be allowed in any of them until the registration problem is corrected.

The second problem is the simple illegal vote. This is when a person or persons perform the voting for others. This can be people who are no longer living, people who simply have no concept of what is going on, frequently in nursing homes, and people who simply chose not to vote. There is significant evidence that this was happening in 2020 in real numbers.

Again, the answer is registration. More important, we need to clean the registry regularly, probably every ten years. We should look for people who are old and possibly deceased. We should check their residence. If they are not living at the home of record, they should not be permitted to vote. If a person moves, they should still be able to vote, but only if they provide a valid change of address and make sure they are removed from the former registry. This is especially true of people moving into nursing homes.

The third problem is what I call remote voting. This method is full of fraud. The simple way to fight it is to make sure the voter has a real reason to vote absentee. The ballot, before it is sent in should be notarized and the notary needs to know he can go to prison for falsely notarizing, especially in bulk.

Finally, to avoid fraud, all voting for a given state should be in person and on one day. It should start at the same time and end on the same time throughout the state, even if the state is in multiple time zones including absentee votes. Moreover, if I had my way, no results should be reported until all states are done voting. It would keep the results from the eastern states from coloring the results in the west.

Finally, more important, Let’s make sure we don’t follow the above saying. Just because someone counts the votes, he should not be able to alter the outcome. Most important, all those who are taking part in the election, no matter how small, no matter how great, must be required to follow the law. And the law should have teeth to back it up. In at least three cases in the 2020 election, officials did not follow the law and they did not spend a day in prison. Actually, they didn’t even get their hand slapped. At least one proudly announced it.

If we don’t make the officials follow the law, how can we expect people to respect the results.