The chaos that would ensue from this is staggering.

And your proposed resolution means someone could DoS an election by copying their ballot and submitting it.

Colorado ballot envelopes already have a bar code - essentially your "serial number".

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because everyone who thinks there's widespread election fraud seems to not know anything about how elections work.

Does your knowledge imply the system is perfect? Is there more than one type of voter fraud? Do we mean just one or two particular federal elections or all elections at every level? What about internal party elections, have those all been extremely fair and above board lately?

There's obvious advantages to perpetrating this class of fraud. Historically we know this fraud has interfered in all types of elections at all levels. Why would this not continue to be a target?

I mean, even in your link, Step 1 includes mailing ballots in. Even recently we've seen the simple flaws in this insecure mechanism. How could you have such a level of confidence in this system? The fact the smart and well meaning people do is all the more reason to engage this subject more rigorously.

Perhaps a more generous interpretation to people making these claims is to understand that we are still not doing a good enough job at making our elections secure, easy, free and fair. For Hacker News this should easily be understood to be a technical challenge and one that the USA has yet again completely failed to succeed at.

I do agree that America is failing this test.

It's literally that easy in Colorado.

Further, if the person the ballot rightfully belonged to actually wants to vote, they'll either request a new one or vote in person - either one of which would invalidate the earlier mailed ballot.