Re: why aren't postal votes considered a fraud risk in the US?
The risk is tiny if the use of mail in ballots is limited, like it has been in the past. If it becomes widespread and common the risk increases exponentially. Because how hard is it to steal ballots from mailboxes in a certain (predominantly democrat or republican) area, if only one in 100 or less mailboxes contains one, versus stealing them from the mailboxes in an area when EVERY SINGLE MAILBOX will contain those ballots at the same time? In the US system, preventing people from voting for one candidate helps the other. Spoil enough democrat (or GOP) ballots and the other party wins. You don't NEED to get valid votes for your own guy, you just need to make sure your guy gets more votes.
It's not just about people filling in ballots that do belong to them, ballots "accidentally" getting lost in the mail system (before voting or after voting before counting) just long enough for them to arrive after the cut-off date will effectively "spoil" them.
Read this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/nyregion/election-absentee-ballots-primary.html
Then tell me how the chaos the mail-in voting is causing in just New York is NOT conducive to fraud or "influencing" of voting results. Imagine this happening for the full presidential election throughout the US!
Voting fraud is rare and doesn't happen, yet there's cases like this: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-philadelphia-judge-elections-convicted-conspiring-violate-civil-rights-and-bribery
Voting fraud is rare and doesn't happen, yet theres over a 1000 proven cases: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/pacei-voterfraudcases.pdf
A lot of them involving absentee (mail in) ballots.
How much fraud is acceptable? It's easy to understand that mail-in voting is easier to manipulate, spoiling ballots by not delivering them or not counting them, declaring them spoiled when their not, declaring them valid when they should be spoiled, etc. So if mail in voting is easier to corrupt, why should you want it?
The fact the DEMOCRATS are pushing for it so hard should give you pause. Because it's NOT proven (and shame on you el-reg for pushing this) that it benefits the democrats. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/us/vote-by-mail-coronavirus.html
Even if all cases of fraud get detected imagine this scenario:
The votes are in, and after a tumultuous 3 months a winner finally emerges from the counts. However a fraud case emerges in 2 states, putting a few hundred thousand votes into doubt. The margins were slim, the opponent (whoever that is) questions the results and demands a recount, with all the fraudulent votes removed. Recounting happens, another month later more another fraud case is detected, this time spoiling another few thousand ballots. More lost time, more uncertainty. Meanwhile the protests over the result turn to riots (like certain other ongoing "protests" in the US). Doubt is cast over million of other votes. Some say they are valid, some say they aren't. Riots break out, sides are choses. Either side claims the other side was the most fraudulent. At some point one side (doesn't matter if it's the winner or the loser, doesn't matter if it's the incumbent or the challenger) claims they MUST be the legitimate winner. And the other side disagrees.
What then? What happens? Does a supreme court ruling calm things down? Unlikely at that point. You're looking at civil war at that point!
Mail in voting will cause absolute chaos and will make voting in the US even more of a shitshow than it already is. I'm not sure however if NOT having mail in voting would make it LESS of a shitshow either..