Massachusetts Town Clerks: New mail-in voting format "ripe" for fraud
Sept. 25, 2020
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Evan Lips, communications director
617-523-5005 ext. 245
WOBURN -- The state's new mail-in ballot authorization system launched Wednesday through Secretary of State William Galvin's office grants anyone the ability to request a ballot without having to submit a signature, a process local town clerks identified as being "ripe" for fraud.
"I was horrified to learn yesterday that the new mail-in ballot application system that was authorized by Chapter 115 of the Acts of 2020 and made 'live' Wednesday of this week through the Secretary's office will allow ANYONE to request a ballot without a signature," Hanover Town Clerk Catherine Harder-Bernier wrote in an email Friday.
Harder-Bernier continued:
"For the seven years that I have served as Hanover's Town Clerk, we have been consistently rejecting ballot applications without signatures. That has simply been the law and we are following it. We are not trained in signature matching, but if there was ever a case where there was a dispute about a fraudulent ballot request, we had a paper trail that we could go back to. The key here is that no ballots were sent following a casual request.
"Now we are being asked to mail ballots to ANY request received in the new portal - and none of those requests will have been signed by a voter. Think of how ripe that process is for fraud!"
Harder-Bernier's concerns echoed those of Sandwich Town Clerk Taylor White, who wrote in a Facebook post Friday that he "used to be able to reasonably defend the vote-by-mail system" but now has "absolutely zero confidence."
"No Social Security or license number verification, no signatures, and the ability to change the voter's mailing address. I am utterly baffled as to how legislators would allow this system to be implemented without reasonable safeguards."
