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I question whether the vote coercion/purchase opportunities opened up by mail voting are actually "huge" compared with in-person voting. But even if so, these opportunities don't scale easily and potential damage is limited.

If some malefactor wanted to buy 1 million votes at an average price of $50 each, that's $50 million of somewhat traceable money and 1 million people, some fraction of whom are certain to reveal they were paid. It won't remain a secret, and it will leave numerous evidence trails.

Contrast with fully electronic voting fraud - scalable, hard to detect, and (when well-executed) leaves little evidence to support nullifying an election and forcing a do-over.




There are ways to make it hard to trace. Suppose your boss tells you to vote for his favorite candidate or you're fired.

Instead of money changing hands, there will be a threat of money ceasing to change hands, and that's much harder to prove




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