Drop Boxes - Always Bad?
Plus WA, NJ, AZ and other national election news updates...
In the wake of the movie 2000 Mules last Spring, there was an outcry to get rid of drop boxes. Here in Idaho, a bill was submitted to do that legislatively, and I supported it at the time. It did not pass.
Soon after, I had a meeting with a county clerk to discuss drop boxes and the clerk asked if I knew who wanted them installed in the first place? I didn’t know the answer but was told that Republicans did because they don’t trust the postal service! When a ballot is placed in a drop box, it is county staff that go and retrieve them instead of the postal service, so if you are concerned about the postal system, drop boxes could make more sense.
But the real issue at the heart of 2000 Mules is not drop boxes. It is absentee voting. If those mules had used postal service ‘drop boxes’, would there have even been a 2000 Mules movie? We would have zero video evidence of the multiple people dropping dozens of ballots at a time into drop boxes if they had instead used the USPS.
While in-person voting is preferable because it is observed voting and the ballot chain of custody is superior to absentee voting, if someone must vote absentee, what would you prefer they use?
USPS: no video, no chain of custody documentation, and handling of ballots by a partisan postal union, or
Drop Box: 24/7 video that is obtainable via public records request (PRR) and an actual chain of custody showing who retrieved the ballots and when
Partly because it is the largest county, Ada gets considerable attention with respect to election fraud. Ada County also has six drop boxes whose locations are listed below. About 15% of the absentee ballots arrive via drop box while the rest arrive via USPS. After the 2022 Primary, I filed a PRR for the video of each of those drop box locations and here is what I found:
County: they provided the video for free at a website where we could download and view
Boise: for a $70 fee (for external drive) they would provide the requested video.
Meridian: for about $1000 (labor) they would provide the video
Eagle: for a $20 fee (thumb drive) they provided the requested video with its own player
Kuna: for a $15 fee (thumb drive) they provided the requested video
Star: the video is also managed by Ada County and was also provided for free at a website for download
I grabbed video from all but Boise and Meridian. There were a few of us that picked random days and watched some of the video. While we only scratched the surface in terms of the total video available, nobody saw anyone drop more than 2 ballots at a time.
With the experience we gained, we have subsequently asked for a ‘drop box pickup’ report from the County that would show the number of ballots picked up at each drop box with each pickup. That report would allow us to spot any unusual patterns and focus our attention on the video for those days.
Conclusion
If you must vote absentee, I encourage people to use video monitored drop boxes over unmonitored USPS mailboxes. With the former, we have good chain of custody from the time the ballot is dropped into the box. With the latter, we have no viewable chain of custody until the ballots are picked up or dropped off with county staff.
Other News…
RFK Jr: Calls Democratic Primary Rigged - In an interview this past week, Robert Kennedy Jr outlines how the democratic primary process would require him to win 80% of the votes in order to beat Biden. The final rules will be decided in the next week. A short video is here and the longer video is here. Kennedy is currently polling around 12% which is very close to where DeSantis sits in the GOP primary.
US: 5th Circuit Slaps Biden Admin for Social Media Censorship - while the ruling whittled down the initial finding from the lower court, it upheld the basic notion that the federal government unduly influenced social media companies to silence opposing opinions. Mentioned in the ruling (p14) was that CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency which is involved heavily in elections) worked with private entities (Center for Internet Security and Election Integrity Project) to instruct social media to remove or demote certain content. The full ruling is here. A summary article is here.
WA: Election Group Says Changes in Law Restrict Access to Election Data - In his substack article, Bill Bruch outlines recent changes to Washington State law that restrict access to election data such as voter rolls and cast vote records (CVR). Bruch is connected with grassroots groups and spoke for Washington at the recent Lindell Summit. Read more here.
NJ: Race Overturned Due to Misconfigured Voting Machines - The report indicated that the mistake was not intentional. Improper updating of election software led to some ballots being double counted and the wrong candidate being placed into office. There are over 3000 counties in the US and most use voting machines so there are bound to be some mishaps. At the very least, however, the mishaps should be reviewed and corrective actions implemented to prevent recurring problems.
AZ: Lake/Hamadeh Lawsuits Continue, Get Boost from Odd Bedfellow - Kari Lake’s lawsuit over the 2022 Governor election survived an attempt at dismissal and is headed to a trial in the AZ Supreme Court later this month. AG candidate Abe Hamadeh’s case has been on hold waiting for a judge to sign off on a prior court loss, but that was obtained and now Hamadeh can file an appeal. Meanwhile, both cases could be bolstered by a separate case that was ruled in favor of the plaintiff, the Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) legal group. RITE had filed suit against the Secretary of State for illegal signature matching procedures which plays a role in both Lake’s and Hamadeh’s cases. A member of the Board of RITE is former AG Bill Barr who has gone against Trump and stated there was no significant fraud in the 2020 election. Epoch Times paywall article is here. A story on Hamadeh’s case is here. A story on the RITE case is here.
Up north Bonner, Boundary, Shoshone, & Kootenai had ONE drop box which was located inside or in the outside the wall of the election building. Monitored.
Your position recommending monitored drop boxes makes sense. Unfortunately, County election officials who transport ballots in their cars between the drop boxes and the counting location can be compromised -- just as Postal Service employees can.
During the 2022 primaries, for example, I watched two county election officials dump ballots from a monitored drop box into a zippered bag that did not look secure before carrying the bag into their car. What happened next, I do not know. The process might have been completely aboveboard. But the point is that we do not know.
Unless we also can monitor the ***entire*** chain -- from drop box, to counting location, and during tabulation -- the potential for mismanagement still exists.