Voting by Mail Opportunities, Bias, and Representation
“This is going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen.” President Trump made this statement in the final segment of the first presidential debate held on Tuesday, 29th of September 2020. Trump then launched into an extended argument with former Vice President Joe Biden about how mail voting is ripe for fraud and mail ballots may be manipulated, come this November.
Mail ballots first developed on a large scale for the 1864 Presidential elections so soldiers could vote from camps during the Civil War. Now, when the coronavirus pandemic looms large, the mail-in voting holds center stage.
In the 2016 US presidential election, nearly one-quarter of votes were cast by post. Given the public health concerns due to COVID-19, these numbers are expected to rise. In nine states and Washington, D.C., every registered voter will be mailed a ballot ahead of the election. California, D.C. and Vermont will do this for the first time this fall. In 34 states, voters can cite the coronavirus as a reason to vote absentee or they can cast absentee ballots without specifying a reason. In nine states, every registered voter will automatically be mailed an application to request an absentee ballot. In 25 states, voters will need to procure an application for an absentee ballot themselves.
In seven states, voters still need a reason beyond the virus to vote absentee. That means many voters in these states will need to vote in person at a polling place, barring any last-minute rule changes (Figure 1).
The simple reason to vote by mail this election is that more mail votes result in a higher turnout. Of the states that have held presidential primaries and caucuses this year, 31 saw an increase in turnout compared with 2016. Of those, 18 had sent either ballots or ballot applications to all voters ahead of the primaries.
So, why did President Trump call mail-in voting fraud? Who actually benefits from mail-in voting?
President Trump has declared that mail-in voting is rife with fraud. His son has gone as far as to claim that Democrats will “add millions of fraudulent ballots that can cancel your vote and overturn the election.”
It’s important to recognize that evidence negating the President’s remarks does exist. For example, Oregon, the first state to adopt a universal vote-by-mail system, had 15 identifiable cases of voter fraud in 15 million ballots cast over 19 years. Similarly, Colorado has uncovered 14 cases of fraud out of a similar total since 2013, during which time Utah has seen just one case of fraud in the past 970,000 ballots. So, as can be observed voter fraud from mail-in ballots appears to be, rather literally, a one-in-a-million occurrence. The cause for concern is not the comments made by the President defaming mail-in voting, it is the need and effect that mail-in voting portrays.
While in-person voting looks safer than expected, mail-in voting looks more dangerous—not because of fraud, but because of human error and partisan politics. Mail votes require several steps, and different steps in different locations, including postmarking the ballots, signing in various places, and using the proper number of envelopes. For that reason, it can confuse first-time voters, and even experienced voters used to queue at local high schools.
With millions of people voting by mail for the first time this year, experts expect more errors—and more rejected ballots. In the 2020 primaries, more than 550,000 mail and absentee ballots were disqualified, a significantly higher number than four years ago. The problem is especially severe in some swing states. More than 23,000 mailed ballots were rejected in the presidential primaries in Wisconsin—more than Donald Trump’s margin of victory in that state in 2016. Deep-blue districts have had the same problem: New York City alone threw out more than 84,000 ballots this primary season
The Pennsylvania GOP has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn state law and declare invalid any ballots that arrive after Election Day, even if they are postmarked before November 3. That state’s Supreme Court recently ruled to throw out “naked ballots”—mail votes that aren’t sealed within two different envelopes—which could invalidate hundreds of thousands more votes. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, more than 6 percent of the ballots in Philadelphia’s 2019 municipal election were “naked” ballots. Disqualifying one in 16 votes in Pennsylvania would be a historic disenfranchisement in a crucial swing state.
There is no question which party would benefit from the mass disqualification of mail-in ballots. According to polls, Democrats are three to four times more likely to vote by mail than Republicans.
How do we proceed?
In general, voting in person is probably not as dangerous as Democratic leaders initially feared. Since the CDC urged Americans to wear masks in public, no major outbreaks have been traced to voting queues. Given this, mail-in voting can be a great way to fulfill the fundamental duty of voting. This could be an amazing alternative for people to exercise their democratic rights.
Editor: Ria Kushan
