No Voter I.D. Check
It is critical for the integrity of any election for poll workers to properly verify a voter’s identity and registration when that voter comes in to cast an in-person ballot. However, there is at least some evidence of a lack of adequate voter ID check across several of the battleground states. For example, in Michigan, the chairperson of a polling location permitted an individual to vote without presenting voter identification and another with only a photocopy of a driver’s license.(43)

In Nevada, poll workers were instructed to advise people who wanted to register to vote and did not have proper Nevada IDs or Driver’s Licenses to do the following: These unregistered voters could go outside into the parking lot and make an appointment with the Department of Motor Vehicles as late as January 2021 to obtain a Nevada Driver’s License as proof of their identity. They could then bring in confirmation of their DMV appointment in either paper or digital form; and that would be sufficient to allow them to be registered.(44) 

Signature Matching Abuses 
It is equally critical that ballot counters legally verify mail-in and absentee ballots by checking if the signatures on the outer envelopes match the voters’ registration records.(45) Note, however, that a variety of signature matching abuses represent a major issue in Nevada, Pennsylvania, and especially in Georgia. 

In Georgia, contrary to state law, the Secretary of State entered into a Consent Decree with the Democrat Party that weakened signature matching to just one verification instead of two. This illegal weakening of the signature match test has called into question more than 1.2 million mail-in ballots cast in Georgia.(46)  

Georgia is not the only state where signature match check abuses have surfaced. Nevada law requires that persons – not machines – review all signatures and ballots. Yet the Clark County Registrar of Voters used a defective signature matching computer system called Agilis to conduct such checks.(47) As will be discussed further below, this problem of machines replacing humans contrary to Nevada state law was compounded by the fact that the Agilis system has an unacceptably low accuracy rate, making it easier for illegal ballots to slip through its screen.(48) 

Signature match abuses also surfaced in Wisconsin where mandatory voter information certifications for mail-in ballots were reduced and/or eliminated, again contrary to state law. As noted in one lawsuit, this change “undermined the authority of the state legislature, reduced the security and integrity of the election by making it easier to engage in mail-in ballot fraud and created another standard-less rule in conflict with the clear terms of the Wisconsin Election Code, preventing uniform treatment of absentee ballots throughout the State.”49  

 “Naked Ballots” Lacking Outer Envelope 
A naked ballot is a mail-in or absentee ballot lacking an outer envelope with the voter’s signature on it. It is illegal to accept the naked ballot as the outer envelope provides the only way to verify a voter’s identity.  

The illegal acceptance of naked ballots appears to be particularly acute in Pennsylvania as a result of ill-advised “guidance” issued by the Secretary of State – a registered Democrat50 – that such naked ballots be counted.  

This issuance of such guidance, in violation of state law,(51) appears to be a blatant attempt by a Democrat politician to boost the count for Joe Biden as it was clear that Democrats would be voting disproportionately higher through mail-in ballots.  This incident is especially egregious because when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected this guidance, the Secretary of State refused to issue new guidance directing election officials to NOT count non-compliant mail-in or absentee ballots.(52)  

Broken Chain of Custody & Unauthorized Ballot Handling or Movements 
The maintenance of a proper chain of custody for ballots cast is the linchpin of fair elections. Chain of custody is broken when a ballot is fraudulently transferred, controlled, or moved without adequate supervision or oversight.(53)   

While chain of custody issues can apply to all ballots, the risk of a broken chain of custody is obviously higher for mail-in and absentee ballots. This is because the ballots have to go through more hands. 

In the 2020 presidential election, the increased use – often illegal use – of unsupervised drop boxes arguably has enhanced the risk of a broken chain of custody. So, too, has the increased practice of so-called “ballot harvesting” whereby third parties pick up ballots from voters and deliver them to drop boxes or directly to election officials.  

Both drop boxes and ballot harvesting provide opportunities for bad actors to insert fraudulent ballots into the election process.  That this is a very serious matter is evident in this observation by BlackBoxVoting.org: “In court cases, chain of custody violations can result in refusal to admit evidence or even throwing a case out. In elections, chain of custody violations can result in ‘incurable uncertainty’ and court orders to redo elections.”(54) (emphasis added)

As an example of the drop box problem, in Pennsylvania, ballots were illegally dumped into drop boxes at the Nazareth ballot drop center in violation of state law.(55) Likewise in Pennsylvania, a man caught on videotape and photos came out of an unmarked Jeep extracting ballots from an unsupervised ballot drop-box to bring them into a ballot counting center. That same man was observed to come back with an empty ballot container to place in the unsupervised drop box.(56)  

In Wisconsin, the state’s Election Committee illegally positioned five hundred drop boxes for collection of absentee ballots across the state. However, these drop boxes were disproportionately located in urban areas which tend to have much higher Democrat registration, thereby favoring the candidacy of Joe Biden.  Note: Any use of a drop box in Wisconsin is illegal by statute. Therefore, the votes cast through them cannot be legally counted in any certified election result.(57)  

As an example of ballot harvesting – in this case at the front end of the process – 25,000 ballots were requested from nursing home residents in Pennsylvania at the same time.(58)

As additional examples of a possible broken chain of custody, there are these: Large bins of absentee ballots arrived at the Central Counting Location in Wisconsin with already opened envelopes, meaning that ballots could have been tampered with.59  They were nonetheless counted. 

Also in Wisconsin, an election worker was observed moving bags of blank ballots into a vehicle and then driving off without supervision.60  There is also the previously referenced case whereby a truck driver has offered a firsthand account of moving large quantities of fake manufactured ballots from New York to Pennsylvania. 

As a final note on the unauthorized handling or movement of ballots, there is the problem of illegal ballot counters. These are persons who not legally permitted and/or certified to be counting ballots. 

In one curious case, an individual who worked as an official photographer for Kamala Harris’ campaign in 201961 was alleged to be involved in scanning ballots in Floyd County, Georgia. Ballot counters cannot have any ties to candidates in a presidential election.    

Ballots Accepted Without Postmarks and Backdating of Ballots 
Across all of the battleground states, it is against state law for poll workers to count either mail-in or absentee ballots that lack postmarks. It is also illegal to backdate ballots so that they may be considered as having met the election deadline for the receipt and counting of such ballots.  There is some evidence of these irregularities in several of the battleground states.  

For example, in Wisconsin, according to one Declaration, employees of the United States Postal Service (USPS) in Milwaukee were repeatedly instructed by two managers to backdate late-arriving ballots so they could still be counted.(62) In addition, the USPS was alleged to have backdated as many as 100,000 ballots in Wisconsin.(63)  

Similarly, in Detroit, Michigan, as noted in a court case, poll workers were instructing ballot counters to backdate absentee ballots so they could be counted.(64)  One poll watcher also observed ballots in Michigan being run through vote tabulation machines without postmarks on them.(65)