Theoretically, how easy is it for a poll counter to commit voter fraud?

[Matty]

I'm not sure how it totally works, but I am assuming that mail-in ballots are physically touched by a middleman ballot sorter. How easy it for such a sorter to "manipulate" the ballot slip? The reason I am asking this is that me, being the political junkie that I sort of am, dreamed last night that I was watching a Colorado ballot counter putting democratic votes into a republican bin.

[Recalcuate]

I'm not sure how it totally works, but I am assuming that mail-in ballots are physically touched by a middleman ballot sorter. How easy it for such a sorter to "manipulate" the ballot slip? The reason I am asking this is that me, being the political junkie that I sort of am, dreamed last night that I was watching a Colorado ballot counter putting democratic votes into a republican bin.

Isn't the standard Colorado vote by mail ballot just a scantron ballot like the automated tests taken at school?

I am not sure they are even sorted by party affiliation. They are probably just fed en masse into a machine that tallies the votes. I don't think a ballot counter does much counting nowadays. The machines do.

[Mr. Morden]

Seems like the easiest form of manipulation would be to "disappear" some absentee ballots before they're ever counted.  Even if it's impossible for you to open them up and look at them without independent poll watchers in the room with you, can you simply "lose" some of the ballots before that stage, if you know that absentee ballots will tend to favor the candidate you're not supporting?  Or are observers from both/all campaigns there watching from the moment a ballot arrives in the mail?