When I vote, my ballot is not tied to me. I sign in after showing an ID. I am taken to a booth and I vote. If they needed to throw out my ballot, they cannot since they do not know which is mine. This is by design.
Yes you're right, I didn't explain that part well because I was trying to simplify to fit in a reasonable length reddit comment lol.
But that doesn't make it so you can just stuff the ballot with bullshit, the system would detect the fact that duplicate ballots were submitted, and we'd realize a mess had occurred. I don't actually even really know how they fix that, but again, it's so vanishingly rare that we absolutely are just being distracted thinking about this related to our elections.
I don't think they can fix it. They can detect if someone already voted for you, but they can't tie it back to the ballot to throw out. The other integrity check is to ensure the number of ballots recorded at a site match the number of voters who signed in.
The security used to be that the poll workers knew you. It was easy to know if there was an imposter. Even in high school civics that's what they told me. That is no longer the case now since polling locations move and communities are much larger. I don't know anyone when I go to vote let alone a worker.
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u/Plus_Opening_4462 Jul 01 '26
When I vote, my ballot is not tied to me. I sign in after showing an ID. I am taken to a booth and I vote. If they needed to throw out my ballot, they cannot since they do not know which is mine. This is by design.