Complicated question about early voting and stolen elections

[ClarkJonathanKent]

I worry a great deal about the integrity of our voting system. I know in my mind and heart that it can, and has been, manipulated at times. There have been several wonderful (and depressing) documentaries on the subject. With that being said, do you think it would be easier to steal an election if lots of people vote early? We have some early voting going on right now in Florida. And my logic says that if memory cards can be loaded with positive votes for one candidate and negative votes for another candidate, wouldn't it that much easier to make those adjustments over a ten day period rather than a 12 hour period if we all just voted on March 15th (here in Florida, at least)? Think about it, the votes of all those people that are early voting are just sitting in some computer system, un-verified and un-accountable to the general public. Do they record those totals at the end of every day and share them somewhere so the public can see them? Not to my knowledge. Anyone here particularly knowledgeable about this sort of thing?

[RobertEarl]

1. Computers are perfection

They can't be hacked and they're always perfect.

Besides, why would anyone want to steal votes?

The private companies who own the vote counting computers operate in secrecy and their chosen programmers are experts in how to make computers do their thing, but why should we question the results?

[KamaAina]

2. From my friend the elections geek:

Security measures are in place that are pretty much the best they have ever been. Usually the speculation about voter fraud centers around IF a policy or IF a new system is engaged or changed. I bring this up a lot with reference to electronic online voting systems.

Early voting brought us Obama. Early voting tends to lock in vote – people often change their minds later. In 2008 if we didn’t have early voting, its would have replicated the 1980 election and McCain would have won.

He is a recovering Republican, now firmly in the Hillary camp, which explains the last part.

[Dont call me Shirley]

3. Voter fraud? Did you mean Election Fraud?

[KamaAina]

4. He presumably did.

Remember, he's a recovering Republican.

[Dont call me Shirley]

6. As a recovering R, he must be filled with Freudian Slips...

[ClarkJonathanKent]

5. I appreciate you assuaging my fears, but...

What do you think about this recent article on the subject?

[link:http://sweetremedy.tv/electionnightmares/2016/03/06/although-clinton-won-massachusetts-by-2-hand-counted-precincts-in-massachusetts-favored-bernie-sanders-by-17/|

[Retrograde]

7. It probably varies by location

I'm a permanent vote-by-mail voter in Santa Clara County, California. We use paper ballots. According to someone who works elections, when they come in some human checks the signature on the outside of the envelope to verify that it has a passing resemblance to the one on file for the voter, and updates the website to show that the ballot was received and counted as valid. AFAIK, the envelopes are opened election day, and the ballots dumped into a big bin to be counted.

Any system can be manipulated if there's the desire. I think the actual instances of fraud are vanishingly small - and for some reason seem to crop up mainly on the Republican side.

Posting partial results is not a good idea: it tends to bias later voters ("Well, my person is way behind so there's no point in my showing up", or worse: "My person is so far behind that he/she already made the concession speech (see Carter in 1980 for an example)).