Harris mentions democracy as the biggest national security threat.

[Twilight Hue]

How would an absentee vote supply proper identification? Do they mail in their votes alongside a copy of their ID? How can you ensure anonymous voting in such a fashion?

All one has to do is pre registration. An absentee ballot with the registrants name already on it can be sent out if such a ballot is needed or required.

It's not complicated.

 

[Ponder This]

How would an absentee vote supply proper identification? Do they mail in their votes alongside a copy of their ID? How can you ensure anonymous voting in such a fashion?

By going to the appropriate office to request one and presenting identification.
The votes are sealed. The chain of custody of the votes is known. Results are counted the same way other votes are counted when preserving anonymity of votes.

Mail-in voting, on the other hand, particularly by sending out ballots to everyone on a voting register is obviously not secure, even though some states conduct voting in this way. Mail-in ballots may be handled by any number of unknown intermediaries before arriving at an unknown point in time (not guaranteed to be before a necessary deadline for the counting of all votes).

 

[Kooky]

All one has to do is pre registration. An absentee ballot with the registrants name already on it can be sent out if such a ballot is needed or required.

It's not complicated.

By going to the appropriate office to request one and presenting identification.
The votes are sealed. The chain of custody of the votes is known. Results are counted the same way other votes are counted when preserving anonymity of votes.

So nobody knows whether the person who picked up the ballot is the one who cast the vote, correct?

In that case, presenting ID is essentially useless for making sure that the person who requested the ballot actually cast the vote. How is that any more secure than mail in voting? Absentee voting as you describe it strikes me as suffering from the exact same problem as mail votes, or as you put it yourself:

[...] may be handled by any number of unknown intermediaries before arriving at an unknown point in time (not guaranteed to be before a necessary deadline for the counting of all votes).

 

[Ponder This]

So nobody knows whether the person who picked up the ballot is the one who cast the vote, correct?

That is incorrect. The person who picks up the ballot presents ID.
I disagree that exceptions to that should exist.

In that case, presenting ID is essentially useless for making sure that the person who requested the ballot actually cast the vote. How is that any more secure than mail in voting? Absentee voting as you describe it strikes me as suffering from the exact same problem as mail votes, or as you put it yourself:

You are confused about the difference between absentee ballots and mail-in ballots. Going to an office, in-person, to request your ballot because you know you will be absent on election day is not the same as when a state mails out unrequested ballots to people on a voting register. One way of doing things is very obviously more secure than the other way of doing things. And it's not just that fraud can occur, it's that the fraud can go largely undetected when you mail out unrequested ballots. Hypothetically, if you wanted to prove an election had no fraud, you would be unable to do so. Similarly, if you didn't have identification for taking an SAT, then you could have someone take the SAT for you and the system would not detect it.