Editor’s Note:
Do you have questions about all the rumors regarding the election? A county clerk was kind enough to answer these questions anonymously for this informative post. This isn’t a random person I don’t know who is sending in disinformation. It’s a person who I know is a county clerk that took the time to help us out with first-hand information instead of “my brother’s wife’s uncle’s ex-mother-in-law’s friend” who makes all sorts of wild claims.
I hope you find this post edifying. ~ Daisy
How can there be more votes than registered voters?
Obviously, there can’t. However, the numbers can be misleading because some states allow voters to register on Election Day. So, while a state might start the day with X number of registered voters, that number will increase by the end of the day in those states. On top of that, there’s been at least one case of someone reporting the wrong number of registered voters at the get go, information that, of course, spread like wildfire before it could be corrected.
How many ballots are allowed for each municipality?
Simply put, as many as they request from the election commission. In some states, voters are allowed up to three ATTEMPTS to vote. Meaning, if they make a mistake on the first ballot, that one is voided and they are given a second one. If they screw that one up, it is voided and they’re given one more. If that one gets messed up, well, three strikes and you’re out. In addition, in states that allow for registration on Election Day, the municipality needs to have ballots on hand for them as well.
What about this whole Sharpie-gate thing?
Yeah, that’s a bunch of malarky. Many districts have been using Sharpies for years without issue. When you run your ballot through the machine, it IMMEDIATELY registers whether the ballot is okay or not. If there are any issues, such as the machine can’t read the ink you’ve used, there will be an error and the ballot will be kicked back.
I’m hearing that some registered voters aren’t showing their vote recorded?
Here’s what happens. If you voted in person, you should have signed a log when you were given your ballot. All mailed ballots are also recorded in this log. This log is called the Poll Book. When the election is over, the Pool Book is submitted to the state’s election commission, typically electronically. The clerk’s office goes through it, line by line and voter by voter, and verifies a signature is present (or in the case of a mailed ballot, that there is a record of the ballot having been mailed out and received). This information entered into the state’s database. As you can imagine, this takes a while as it is a tedious and laborious process. In most districts, it takes more than a day or two. So, in the meantime, voters might not see their information updated online.
Why is the counting taking so long?
I know, we Americans are used to instant results with most things and having to wait, especially for something this important, drives us nuts. Here’s how this works. Voters have basically three options for how to cast their votes, depending on their state:
1) Vote in person on Election Day.
2) Vote early in person. In some states, you can go to the clerk’s office the week or so before Election Day and cast your vote. This ballot is sealed and kept in a secure location until Election Day.
3) Mailed ballot requested in advance. The time frames may vary from state to state, but you can request a ballot be sent to your home. You fill it out at your leisure, in the presence of a witness. You sign it, your witness signs it, and you can either mail it back or drop it off in person. The sealed ballots are kept in a secure location until Election Day.
With me so far?
Now, all day long on Election Day, the polls are busy with people voting in person. From open to close, many areas had lines out the door, down the hall, and on the sidewalk. Once the polls close and those lines go away, the clerks and poll workers can start processing the mailed ballots and early votes. They are taken out from storage, opened, and fed into the voting machines. They must be opened carefully so they aren’t damaged. This whole process takes time. Given that this election probably saw more mailed in and early vote ballots than any other in US history, it might be a bit before they are all processed.
Why are so many of these mailed ballots for Biden?
This actually makes sense, when you think about it. President Trump was rather adamant about people not voting early or mailing in their ballots. So, the majority of people who voted for him likely did so in person.
What’s the difference between an absentee ballot and a mail-in ballot?
Not a thing. The terms mean the exact same thing.
What about all these ballots that people were receiving in the mail?
Experience has shown that what people thought was a ballot in their mailbox was actually a solicitation or advertisement suggesting they request an absentee ballot. But, because it has the word BALLOT on it, people assumed that’s what it was.
Thank you to our friendly, anonymous clerk for taking the time to clear this up.
Hey, there, Daisy again.
This is not to say that the election process has been seamless or that nothing sketchy has happened. But let’s focus our energy on things that are really being done incorrectly, not on things that are simply misunderstood.
I want to thank the county clerk who answered these questions for us. What with the crazy political situation going on in the United States, I’m sure you can understand the person’s need for anonymity.
I hope you found this post informative!
I appreciate the information from your friend, Daisy. It’s interesting to see more about how things work with the voting process. Unfortunately the election is still being stolen in many other ways, right before our eyes, and not enough is being done about it.
There are still methods of legal recourse but I fear that efforts will be insufficient, and then it will be too late. Then the true bullies will have won and our country will crumble even faster. It’s a sad day.
I thought this the way the election might go and I was hoping I would be wrong. Even so, we can still act fairly toward each other and live as freely as we can. None of this takes away our obligation to be decent human beings to each other at the same time as we protect what’s dear to us including our liberty.
Some states allows “same day registration” – SDR. According to National Conference of State Legislatures, every SDR state requires proof of identity and proof of residency.
Suppose someone visited several precincts, did same day registration are each one, and voted. When would that be detected?
There are many registered voters who are dead, moved away, etc. What prevents someone from requesting and voting a mail-in ballot for a dead registered voter?
Suppose a state allows mail-in ballots to be counted without matching signatures? North Carolina, Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire allow this. What prevents an individual from requesting mail-in ballots, filling them out, signing them an illegible signature, and sending them in?
Suppose someone requested a mail-in ballot for voters expected to vote for the “other” party? When is the duplicate vote detected and how is the duplicate resolved?
“Suppose someone visited several precincts, did same day registration are each one, and voted. When would that be detected?”
It would be detected immediately. The person’s information is entered into the state database at the time of registration, so as to prevent exactly the sort of thing you mentioned.
“There are many registered voters who are dead, moved away, etc. What prevents someone from requesting and voting a mail-in ballot for a dead registered voter?”
Every ballot that is completed ahead of Election Day must be witnessed. The witness fills out their name and address as well as signs the ballot. If malfeasance was suspected, this gives investigators a way to check on things.
“What prevents an individual from requesting mail-in ballots, filling them out, signing them an illegible signature, and sending them in?”
See previous answer re: witness.
“Suppose someone requested a mail-in ballot for voters expected to vote for the “other” party? When is the duplicate vote detected and how is the duplicate resolved?”
Every ballot that is mailed out at the request of the voter is recorded. Meaning, there is a record that the ballot was mailed out and the date that it happened. When it is returned to the clerk’s office, the date it arrived is also noted. If a voter requested a ballot to be mailed and they then show up in person on Election Day, they have a choice — they can either “spoil” their mailed ballot and vote in person or they can let the mailed ballot stand. If someone didn’t request the mailed ballot, they can, and certainly should, vote in person and have that mailed ballot spoiled.
There are checks and balances at every step, some of which I know about that aren’t being discussed in this article, post, or whatever you want to call it. Is the process 100% foolproof? Of course not, nothing is. But the process is far more secure than social media might lead you to believe.
“Every ballot that is completed ahead of Election Day must be witnessed.” Not totally true; in some states I’m sure, but in Colorado the ballot is NOT witnessed unless you can’t sign and it is marked with an “X”, then a witness is required. Otherwise you just sign your name and mail it in. (I have done this for years.) Then the county clerk compares that signature with the signature on file at time of registration.
“Suppose someone visited several precincts, did same day registration are each one, and voted. When would that be detected?”
You said, “It would be detected immediately. The person’s information is entered into the state database at the time of registration, so as to prevent exactly the sort of thing you mentioned.”
According to National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) not every state enters the registration into a computer system at the time of registration. So the question remains, in those states when will the problem be detected? December is the wrong answer.
You said, “Every ballot that is completed ahead of Election Day must be witnessed. The witness fills out their name and address as well as signs the ballot.”
According to a headline on Politifact, “Detroit has “2,503 dead people registered” including “one voter born in 1823.”” How many of those people voted on Tuesday and when will we know?
In Michigan, absentee ballots do not require a witness signature. There is a ballot request, it must be signed. The returned ballot must be signed. Michigan says the signatures are checked but not when. I would be surprised if they are checked before being counted. When there are thousands of absentee ballots all of that checking would hugely slow the count. Again, December is the wrong answer.
“What prevents an individual from requesting mail-in ballots, filling them out, signing them an illegible signature, and sending them in?”
In Pennsylvania, the signatures don’t have to match. An illegible signature is assumed to be valid. Pennsylvania Supreme Court [J-113-2020]
“North Carolina doesn’t do signature-matching” [Raleigh NewsObserver 9/24/2020] but they do have witnesses.
I agree that the process has checks. I assert that the process is designed for a small number of absentee ballots and that under the current absentee deluge and the pressure to deliver results, answers may not emerge in a timely fashion. “Results: right or fast, pick one”
As a nation we are accustomed to knowing the winner Tuesday night or Wednesday. Now weeks may pass before all the validation work is complete. Remember Bush v Gore and Florida. The current public tension, already exhibiting organized violence, is exacerbated. Delayed election results elevate the pressure and tension.
After the election is complete, someone goes through all the ballots, the mail in ones, the people who sign the poll book and if there are duplicates between prescincts, then that person would be arrested for voter fraud. The system has worked for hundreds of years with very few fraudent attempts succeeding. I think it will survive this one.
Suppose someone visited several precincts, did same day registration are each one, and voted. When would that be detected?
Your proof of residency determines which precinct you vote in, so you can’t just hop around. Also, that would be voter fraud. It would be immoral, and if you commit it, you go to jail. What keeps you from murdering someone?
Ever hear of a provisional ballot? When will the provisional ballots be checked?
You might be entertained by comments sent to me. “Americans today are literally dancing in the street, much like the Italians did after Mussolini was dispatched.” Mussolini and his wife were captured by communist partisans near Lake Como and executed in April 1945. Their bodies were taken to Milan and hung upside down in a service station to prove their deaths.
I thought we had a better system. Now I am beginning to wonder.
In IA the signatures must match. If they don’t the request for absentee or the ballot is set aside to be investigated. If information doesn’t match then the vote is set aside as invalid. Of the person whose name is on the ballot is able to confirm this is them the ballot will count, but this requires confirmation before the ballot will count.
Signatures may not match bc of many different reasons, some as simple as injury to that hand or debilitating disease . In any case IA has protocols and laws set up to handle this. The net result has been less than.006% voters fraud in the state according to the GOP run Executive branch and reports run through all votes up to 2018.
The difference is the number of absentee ballots compared to prior years. You all are educating me your systems and that is sending me to find more of my own answers. That’s all good and I do appreciate it.
Michigan has 88 counties. The lowest by-county vote for Trump was 26% (Washtenaw county). But early Wednesday morning 115,000 ballots were entered in Michigan, every single one for Biden and my state government is asserting that every one of those ballots is valid. So every absentee voted against Trump? Ja shure, you betcha. It is going to take a lot to convince me that those ballots are valid.
As my down-easter friend says, “you can’t get there from here”.
It’s a little late to worry about rules and such now.
This is headed off the tracks and there aren’t seatbelts on runaway trains.
Now is the time to mitigate risk for you and yours.
There are places to be and places not to be. Supplies should be topped off. Last minute skills checks should be brushed up on with dry runs.
The timeline is very flexible as you need to be.
Thank you and your friend for clearing up a few things. I was already on board with most mail-in votes will be Biden because President Trump told people to go to the polls to vote. So it is expected that most of those that voted to re-elect President Trump would do so in person.
Unfortunately, at this point in time, I don’t think it matters whether anything shady went on or not. There will be problems no matter who is announced as the President-elect.
The entire country is stressed out over so many issues and like those that rioted earlier this year, people need an outlet. It’s sad, but human nature. We all want an outlet for frustration and stress and way too many people are willing to follow the masses on both sides of the issues.
I’m prepared to spend the entire winter away from viruses and violence if need be. One quick trip to Costco and it will be a comfortable winter.
May the odds be ever in your favor.
Good information is good to know.
Thank you for your time to explain.
If you think this election wasn’t stolen for demented joe and matress back harris, you are a fool. Your site and many others will be taken down as hate speech in a harris dictatorship. That is what you should prepare for.
That is not what I said in this article. I never said there weren’t shenanigans afoot. I said let’s focus on the actual issues, not on the things that are actually legit.
Name-calling is something most people were taught not to do by third grade. President Trump struggles with this and apparently so do you. Name-calling will never get someone who disagrees with you to agree with you. It only serves to separate and already divided people. Please stop doing this. If someone is liberal, can you imagine Jimmy Carter talking about his d*ck in a nationally televised debate and mocking those with a disability? If you are a conservative, could you imagine Ronald Reagan saying “they let you grab them by the p*ssy?”
We used to be a decent and respectful people, both liberal and conservative. We need desperately need to get back to that.
And before you go and accuse me of being some sort of flaming liberal, I voted for Ben Sasse and Joe Biden.
Peace!
“Extremism in the cause of Liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of Justice is no virtue”.
Sen. Barry Goldwater 1964.
Daisy, Actually there a a lot of difference between an absentee ballot and a mail-in ballot.
An ABSENTEE ballot is one that is SPECIFICALLY requested by the voter and is sent with that person’s name and the country voting apparatus has a record of the person requesting that ballot…lots of safeguards there. A mail-in ballot is simply a ballot that is sent out from the county based on a voter list they have on file. Voter lists have notoriously been highly inaccurate even to the point where judges have ordered counties and States to purge their on-file lists of ineligible voters, dead people and those who have moved to other States. Mail-in ballots leave a HUGE GAP of fraud potential!!! Don’t let people fool you with the, “there’s no difference.” There’s a lot of fraud taking place right before our eyes!
You beat me to it.
I really thought Daisy would have caught that.
Kinda disappointed.
I think the point was that absentee ballots are mailed in. Mailed in ballots are, oddly enough, also mailed in. Once they are received they are processed exactly the same way. That’s the way they are not different from each other. The way they are requested are different, the way they are handled are not.
It matters which state this clerk is from. In the past there was no distinction between absentee ballot and mail-in ballot. Now in states like California there is a distinction as absentee ballots are requested but all registered voters – legal and illegal, dead or alive – received an unsolicited mail-in ballot. Also as a Trump supporter I used a drop box to avoid mailing my ballot. We have video confirmation of a drop box in our city being collected the day after the election. I have very little confidence that this election has not been interfered with. I’m sure either way it goes many Americans will feel like it went wrong.
“I’m sure either way it goes many Americans will feel like it went wrong”.
That is probably most succinct analysis I’ve seen of the election.
And my son is kind of sloppy with his handwriting at times and the clerk made him verify his signature with his mailed in vote. But whatever – probably won’t make a difference to someone else.
Nice explanation of how it SHOULD work. But this election has not been normal or by the rules. This was an election filled with blatant fraud and stealing of every variety and committed at all levels. I came from Chicago and saw it first hand from years back when Daley ordered ballots burned so hey couldn’t be recounted.. The Dem Machine cheating and fraud goes back many decades. I am sure my dead relatives still vote every year. Now the “Chicago way” has been exported to all the large Democrat held metro’s and God help us if they get away with this! Pennsylvania likewise has lots of high profile fraud prosecutions in its recent election history.
If you are paying attention and reading about what happened in anything but the MSM you will see that there are many strange, unusual and unexplained things happening!!! Like 69K votes for Biden that “showed up” in Michigan in the wee hours did NOT have corresponding votes for his Senate candidate Gary Peters. Same in Georgia. In Georgia the number of folks who voted for Trump was very close to the number who voted for the Republican candidate for Senator John James – that makes perfect sense.
BUT there were 95K MORE votes JUST for Joe Biden than his Senate candidate?????
Did tens of thousands of voters decide they didn’t want to vote on any of the downstream candidates? Have YOU EVER DONE THAT?
It is more blatant fraud pure and simple. Check out the Michigan and Georgia stats for yourself.
Or how about the 7 counties in Milwaukee having more votes than registered voters in the county???
And then there was the video I saw of a wagon full of votes brought into the Michigan voting center in the wee hours of the morning – from a van- no chain of custody just a guy with a box of ballots in his wagon and now it seems the video has disappeared off of You Tube……
Do your research folks!!!! The proof is out there of all the illegal fraud that is happening!!! This election is being stolen by corrupt officials at every level and we will lose America if it is allowed to be successful.
If they get away with stealing the presidency we will be just another third world country. Not to mention ripping apart the nation into two warring factions forever – never to be repaired again. The truth is out there – educate yourself and call out the corruption!!!! God help us and protect us from all who would destroy our election integrity and along with it our country.
There IS a difference between absentee ballots and mail in ballots.
An absentee ballot is REQUESTED ahead of time, usually because the voter will not be able to vote in person (or does not want to vote in person)
The important point is that an ABSENTEE BALLOT is REQUESTED by the VOTER.
Mail in ballots are sent out whether REQUESTED OR NOT. I live in Washington state and we have be doing all mail in voting for the past several decades. The process actually started in 1983, and had a lot of issues during the first several years. Fortunately, there were no elections where this caused a concern regarding the results.
The big concern with mass mail in ballots, in states that have not done this before, is the very real concern for voter fraud. In theory, ballots will be mailed ONLY to registered voters, but in some states it is unclear who they send ballots to)
Questions that really have to be asked:
Are the voter registration rolls current?
Are the addresses current?
Have deceased voters been removed from the rolls?
Have voters no longer living in the state been removed?
When was the last time the rolls were updated?
(Believe it or not some states have decided that it is RACIST to update voter registration rolls, so they don’t do it).
Mail in voting is great, as long as the system has safeguards to prevent fraud and abuse, and that takes time. Now would be a great time to start cleaning up the voter mess, well before the next election (rather than kicking the can down the road, which sadly is what will likely happen).
Every LEGAL ballot should be counted.
My state, Maine, does NOT send out ballots unless requested by voter.
And some states only vote by mail. NO in person voting.
Thank you Daisy for the time you took to attempt to calm things down. However, your expert did get a couple things wrong. There IS a difference between Absentee and Mail-In ballots. While the ballots themselves are the same, the difference is in the distribution. I know two people who have never voted absentee who had received unsolicited ballots in the mail. They are intelligent people and know the difference between election mail and actual ballots.
Also, it doesn’t make sense that every single absentee ballot (that came in through untraceable chains of custody) in some precincts was for the same candidate and no other contests on the ballots were marked. In several states, Governors, Senators and Congressmen were also up for election and the Republican candidate won. Common sense dictates that if one took the time to fill out their ballot at home and chose Biden, they would not have left the other candidate races blank.
We have always suspected that there was some election tampering going on, but this is more widespread and obvious than we ever thought.
Daisy , Ask your buddy (Jose) from Venezuela if this was not the way the Communists took over there. Because the delays and fake votes is how Hugo Chavez became Dictator for Life. The same playbook is being used to give us President Kommie-La
As an election clerk/registrar of voters I would like to add – my state does NOT have people sign anything when voting. People state their name and address and a ballot clerk looks them up in a book, puts a checkmark next to their name.
And I registered some people to vote who I’m pretty sure shouldn’t have been registered in my town. My state makes it too easy in my opinion.
“Why are so many of these mailed ballots for Biden?” “This actually makes sense, when you think about it.”
not at a ratio of 113000 / 23 it doesn’t.
been predicting that trump would lose in 2020 to vote fraud. went to bed 03nov thinking I’d been wrong and feeling good about that. now, looks like I’m going to be right.
Calm way of thinking about. The real issue is the lack of justice or info on all that led us to this point. Hillery server, russia hoax, epstien suicide, kavanagh hearing smearing, biden ukraine china on and on.
We the people are no more, corporate owns america.
I’ll add another log on the fire:
Voter ID
In my state, you have always (at least the 40 odd years I’ve been voting) you have had to show ID. You can show your DL/state ID, a utility bill or piece of government issued mail. And we have also always been required to ‘sign in’, on paper in the old days, electronically lately. My state haa had ‘absentee’ voting for some time. And yes, the voter must request that ballot. I would have had no problem voting absentee here if the local situation had been worse. I chose to vote in person on Election Day for tradition, and it was ‘safe’ here.
Thank you to your ‘source’ for clearing some things up. I do believe there are ‘shenanigans’ going on. And the election process does need to be ‘cleaned up’. But no one in gooberment has done anything about it yet, so I’m not hopeful.
Thanks for working to keep things clear.
In my state you have to request an absentee ballot of vote in person..
I happened to be at the courthouse about a problem with prooerty taxes. Whe i came out it was the first day of early voting and there was no waiting, so i voted.
Had to show an ID and sign in. Tge machine accepted my filled out ballot so i was given my “i voted” sticker and headed home. Clean easy and counted.
Do I believe there are problems and an election stolen? Yes. And I made a small donation to the legal fund.
I pray truth will be known. And I pray for peace. I doh’t want to see violence.
My state is going off and on with businesses closing. It’s killing business. I’ve had covid and this new wave has taken thd life of a best friend and acquaintances are hospitalised. Considering covidx19 was a new thing Trump did pretty well and tried to maintain states rights. Bideds words scare me.
As a poll worker in Detroit much of the above responses are simply false information. There was a great deal of under-handedness and intimidation tactics used against republican poll workers in Detroit. This I know first hand. So much propaganda circulating it’s not even funny.
Missouri has yet another variant of the mail-in versus absentee setup. We have never done this kind of mail in before, but it was created specifically for people who did not have any reason to vote by mail except for concerns about being in a crowded place during a pandemic. Ballots had to be requested either online from the Secretary of State, or you could call the county clerk. If you were not part of a specific risk group, like over 65, these ballots not only needed matching signatures, but the outer envelope needed to be notarized. Mail in ballots could not be dropped off. They had to go through the postal service. In my town, where we would normally send all mail to a bigger city for sorting, election mail was separated out, processed locally, and then walked over to the county clerk, since we are the county seat. If you voted absentee on paper, I believe there was still a need for notarizing the envelope unless you were in a very specific risk group, but those ballots could be dropped off in person at the county clerk.
This was all very complicated, and people were trying to figure out how to get access to a notary and all that. And then we were all suddenly reminded on September 29th that Missouri has absentee in person voting. What this means is that you can show up in person to a designated location, which is often a county clerk office, or a county multi-purpose space, and you vote exactly as you would on November 3rd, with the exception that after you sign the screen, they ask you for your excuse. Not knowing whether you will for sure be in town on Election Day is quite sufficient, and nothing seems to be followed up. Our absentee in person station was staffed by several people all day for nearly five weeks before the election. For most people, there was no wait at all. I have no idea why they don’t just call it early voting. It is wonderful, because in one of the polling places in particular, the wait for a presidential election might be a couple of hours. But until a week or so before the election, this in-person absentee station has no wait at all most of the time.
The biggest issue we saw was that a lot of people didn’t know what a notary public was or how to find one. It is here as easy as going through the drive-thru at the bank, but of course people don’t necessarily use a bank. I know a couple of people who got themselves registered as notaries at their own expense so that they could set up on college campuses or farmers markets and just notarize ballots all day to help people who wouldn’t otherwise know where to go.
Why didn’t you ask this person about the voting machines in Michigan and PA and the other states that kicked votes to Biden?
There is one single statistical improbability (I would even argue impossibility) that I find the most compelling argument for voter fraud. Feel free to compare to past elections: Joe Biden managed to expand the Democrat voter base by 10mil, AND Donald Trump managed to expand his voter base by 8 mil? Can anyone show me historically other candidates who managed to expand their base, without pulling votes from the other candidate?
Why is this article still up when the information contained in it is not accurate. The errors have been pointed out several times. It should be taken down, leaving this up is knowingly misleading people who trust this site. Please remove it