Sure, but how much can/should the state do about people in the same household hypothetically stealing each other's ballots? The registration process requires ID, so I'm not convinced additional authentication is needed.
Don't limit your imagination to households, although that's also a problem. What about apartments that receive all their ballots at the same time, or congregate living shelters, etc. etc.? It's not that hard to conceive of collecting tens or even hundreds of ballots if you have the right access to mail.
The state should eliminate this problem by requiring everyone to vote in person on election day with voter ID using a secret ballot.
People who order absentee ballots are presumably expecting them to arrive. It would be pretty obvious if someone started taking ballots from such a highly engaged voting demographic. If not from people looking for their missing ballots, then it would show up as double voting eventually. Every apartment I've ever lived at also had locking mail boxes. In the absence of evidence that any ballot box stuffing happening at any scale, and having so many controls in place, we can safely assume it is not happening. But sure, perhaps mailed ballots could be improved to further combat the possibility of mail theft.
I've tried to explain this, but I will repeat. Nobody orders them any more; they are sent by default. That includes to the lowest engagement voters who may not even be aware of them.
We should not expect there to be much evidence that this is happening because the system has in effect, if not by intention, been designed to prevent any such evidence from being collected.
That is why there is some legitimate doubt in the tamper proof nature of our elections.
Must be a state-specific thing. Here is Michigan we still need to request them separately. Either way, it's still authenticated at time of registration, and it would still be relatively easy to catch. Someone would notice for all of the reasons mentioned plus there are cameras everywhere in residential areas these days. People are occasionally convicted of voting fraud btw. It's just extremely rare because it's an incredibly high risk and low reward crime.
Why stuff ballot boxes when you can just make it harder for people that typically vote against your party to even get their ballots in the first place, or divide up cities in convoluted boundaries to prevent non-white communities from being able sway districts? All perfectly legal methods that have worked well for the GOP, which didn't even win the popular vote with their last president. That is the real reason GOP leadership pushes anti-absentee ballot narratives and DNC tries to expand those programs.
All of these things are problems that weaken trust in the system.
Widespread absentee ballots are bad, early voting is bad, gerrymandering is bad, lack of voter ID checking is bad, non-secret voting is bad. I'd like to see them all done away with.
