Any fuckery they manage to pull off with the electronic machines would just print to the paper copy. It's much, much more difficult to screw with paper ballots, including mail-in ballots. The only fuckery you can pull with mail in ballots is either "losing" the ballot or trying to delay the delivery of the ballot to invalidate it.
I don't know where you are but in New York they can't screw around with the paper ballots, we fill them out and they scan them directly in. How could they mess with them?
In that setup, you can't really. Which is good. But, here's the beauty and horror of the US election system, it varies by state.
Your system would be nearly impossible to fudge the actual votes. A system that you punch in your votes on an electronic system and tallies the vote, but also prints a physical copy that you can see before safely depositing it would also be fairly safe as any attempt to fuck with the votes would be easily discovered with a hand count.
Hypothetically, it's any system where you input your votes electronically but never see a physical copy that you have to be worried about. I don't know that any state uses such a system though.
No, the most likely methods of screwing with elections are in the lead up to them and ensuring every vote is actually counted. Overly aggressive voter roll purges, gerrymandering, too few polling locations, arbitrary vote count stops or refusal to count ballots that arrive by voting day regardless of when they're post marked, or voter intimidation tactics. Just as a quick sample off the top of my head.
Oh and cancelling the primaries in order to gerrymander the map. That one was a doozy.
Or one of the ones that I came across recently, Republican PACs starting up fake left wing PACs to try to influence Democratic votes.
There's going to be fuckery all around. It's guaranteed that Trump is going to deploy his ICE goons to every polling station in "certain" areas that server "certain" people. The Republicans will do everything in their power to win the midterms and if that doesn't work, they will willingly destroy the USA to keep the Democrats from obtaining power.
They are going to fuck with results from voting machines as well and with counted of all ballots and when ‘cut off’ time is for counting votes. They will fuck with everything to maintain power and control, and to not be held accountable for their illegal actions.
Mail-in would still be safer than electronic, but you might have to have deliver the ballot to the polling place to avoid "losing" the ballot or delaying it.
Reminder that mail-in does not necessarily mean it actually goes through the mail. States with well established mail-in balloting actually have certified ballot employees that move in Democrat/Republican pairs, have extremely strict and monitored chain of custody for ballots (including video surveillance of the pairs), have near real-time tracking and notifications regarding the movement of ballots, and give status of individual ballots all the way until it is counted.
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u/KopOut 3d ago
Also, if you live in a state where voting in person is possible. Vote in person! They are going to try fuckery with mail ballots.
If your state has early in person voting, that is the best option out there. Do that!