Arizona, Nevada disgraced the nation

While there is a diplomatic way of putting this, I won't use that diplomatic approach to this important issue. Arizona and Nevada have disgraced the nation with their election procedures. It's one thing to have early voting. It's another to screw up the procedures so badly that you're still processing ballots 4 days after Election Day.

Arizona and Nevada have a total population of 10,520,000 people. By comparison, Florida's population is 22,000,000. It took Florida until midnight of Election Night to process all of their ballots, including their mail-in and early ballots. We'll have to suffer through at least 2-3 more days to find out Arizona's election results.

What's worst is that Nevada's election system isn't secure. Victor Joecks, a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports "For the past two elections, Nevada sent mail ballots to all registered voters, unless they opted out. That means around 1.8 million ballots went out. Well more than 1 million won’t be returned. Previously, a voter could request an absentee ballot for any reason."

Check out this report from CBS:

According to CBS's reporting, Nevada "hopes" to finish counting their ballot by next Thursday. Joecks continued his reporting:

With that many ballots floating around, there are obvious security concerns — it’s much easier to get ahold of someone else’s ballot. Someone could vote for their spouse or child who doesn’t care about politics, but was automatically registered at the DMV. In apartment complexes, ballots of previous residents have ended up in the trash. A postal worker could pocket ballots. There’s not exactly an airtight chain of custody.

Joecks (pronounced Jakes) then adds this:

As I did two years ago, I tested that theory this election. I had 11 people send me a picture of their ballot envelope. I then wrote their name in my handwriting. Each voter than copied my version of their signature onto their ballot return envelope. They sent me a picture to ensure it wasn’t their normal handwriting. This simulated signing someone else’s ballot. It’s also legal because each voter signed his or her own ballot.

If signature verification worked, all 11 of those ballots should have been set aside for mismatched signatures. Instead, six were accepted. That’s a greater than 50 percent chance of being accepted. When I did this experiment in 2020 with nine voters, eight had their ballots accepted. That was an almost 90 percent acceptance rate.

In other words, the potential for fraud is significant. Without Photo ID, there's no way to guarantee that the ballot submitted is legitimate. That isn't proof of fraud. It's just proof that the potential for fraud is significant.

Ballot processing that isn't secure and that takes days, not hours, is unacceptable. If other states can get their votes tabulated and their results turned in within hours, that should be required for all states.

Further, with a few exceptions, early voting should be done in-person, not by mail-in ballot. Making the rest of the nation wait while Nevadans take their time in processing ballots isn't acceptable. It isn't fair to the rest of us.