WASHINGTON -- Current and former election administrators said it would be virtually impossible for a foreign country to produce and mail in phony absentee ballots without detection, an issue Attorney General William Barr raised as a serious possibility in an interview published Monday.
Barr told the New York Times Magazine that a foreign operation to mail in fake ballots was "one of the issues that I'm real worried about."
"We've been talking about how, in terms of foreign influence, there are a number of foreign countries that could easily make counterfeit ballots, put names on them, send them in," Barr said. "And it'd be very hard to sort out what's happening."
Judd Choate, the elections chief in Colorado, where nearly all voters cast ballots by mail, said "there is zero chance" it could happen in his state because of security precautions in place there.
States use a variety of safeguards to confirm the validity of mail ballots. In about half of the states, ballot envelopes bear a tracking bar code or tally mark that is unique to each voter. About 15 states require signatures to be matched against voter registration. Ballots are rejected if they are not sent in regulation envelopes that vary widely from state to state in format, size and paper stock. And there is little chance, administrators said, that election officials would not detect a surge of duplicate ballots arriving from the same voter.
The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.
The country is expected to see a surge of mail ballots this year after nearly 30 states have already changed rules or practices in response to the public health threat posed by covid-19. President Donald Trump's campaign and the national GOP have launched an effort to prevent the expansion of voting by mail, claiming it could lead to widespread fraud.
Like Trump, the attorney general has voted absentee in the past. State voting records show that Barr, a resident of Fairfax County, Va., in the suburbs of Washington, voted by mail in 2012 and 2019. Trump cast an absentee ballot in Florida's March primary.
Chris Davis, the chief of elections in Williamson County, Texas, outside of Austin, said ballot envelopes are coded in his state, as well.
"When I get these questions I usually say, 'Anything's possible, but it's not easy to do,' " he said.
A Section on 06/03/2020