So, each ballot has genetic residue of people who came in contact with it. This might include the state officials (printers who printed the ballots, mailmen, vote counters etc.) and of course the voter. The state officials might be a couple dozen people.
Now, each real ballot will have genetic residue of its voter, which means that in a batch of 1000 ballots, there should be genetic residue of more than 1000 people: the state officials, and then the 1000 voters.
But if someone creates fraudulent ballots, the entire batch would have genetic residue of far fewer people: the state officials and the fraudsters. The entire batch will have genetic residues of maybe less than 100 people.
Genetic tests cost about $50. I believe it should be enough to test a hundred ballots from each batch to be sure, so a couple thousand dollars per batch.
Can this be done, is anyone planning on doing it?
Note that at this point the goal is not to use the genetic tests to identify the fraudsters, but just to confirm that there is fraud.
(Posting this again since it didn't receive much attention, and I believe it's important.)
If you want to prove the fact in court, you kinda have.
Oh my God. I have explicitly written that the goal is not to identify the people who came in the contact with the ballot, but just to count how many different people are there. It's different from the test that matches two people or determines genetic origin.
No I'm not. The genetic residue would be collected from the ballot, not from the people.