While it was a small experiment, it was a telling one. Eight out of nine ballots with mismatched signatures managed to get through the system.

Victor Joecks, a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal decided to run an experiment testing the ballot signature verification system used in Las Vegas to ensure the integrity of the mail-in vote.

"Nine people participated in this test. I wrote their names in cursive using my normal handwriting. They then copied my version of their name onto their ballot envelope. This two-step process was necessary to ensure no laws were broken."

Voters in Las Vegas had been told for months that any suggestion that signatures would not be reliably verified was a myth!

Fact!

Now put your signs away, sit down, and shut up about it already. Didn't you see the myth/fact graphics?

Asked last week about the reliability of the system, Clark County Registrar Joe Gloria said,

"I'm confident that the process has been working throughout this process."

Perhaps some modesty is in order here.

Given the haphazard way in which ballots were mailed out, the opportunity for fraud was certainly present.

"Billy Geurin, a 10-year Las Vegas resident, found five loose ballots in his apartment mailroom. A reader emailed me a picture of a pile of mail on the side of the road, which included loose ballots. There are numerous pictures of similar examples on social media."

And apparently, it went beyond mere opportunity.

"This could explain how a ballot "signed" by Rosemarie Hartle, who died in 2017, made it through signature verification, as reported by 8 News Now. It could explain how Jill Stokke, a longtime Las Vegas resident, was told the signature on her ballot matched, even though she said she never received it."

Does it matter? It depends on the race.

"Leave aside the presidential race. Fewer than 200 votes separate the leading candidates in Senate District 5. In 2018, state Sen. Keith Pickard won his race by 24 votes. Even small amounts of fraud can swing results."

We have been assured by our betters that we have nothing to worry about, and yet those betters seem curiously disinterested in ensuring that we have nothing to worry about.

"County officials aren't working proactively to determine whether unscrupulous actors abused this vulnerability in a widespread fashion. Gloria's office doesn't 'have an investigatory team." He said his office catches fraudulent votes "when they're reported to us.' So if a criminal doesn't admit he committed voter fraud, Clark County is unlikely to find out about it. Willful ignorance isn't an election security strategy."

None of this is to say that rampant fraud resulted in Joe Biden recording more votes than Donald Trump in Las Vegas, but it does raise serious questions regarding the integrity of our elections. Official pronouncements that there is nothing to see here, and attempts to publicly shame those who raise questions as conspiracy nuts only make it worse.

The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one.

Maybe it's time to take that first step.