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Hello Everyone:
The Blogger Candidate Forum is back. Before we get started on today's subject, voting by mail, a little election news: First, VPOTUS Joe Biden (D-DE) narrowed his choice for a running mate to Senators Kamala Harris (D-CA), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Representative Karen Bass (D-CA). Each of these incredibly brilliant and successful women would make an excellent running mate. The Candidate Forum has its manicured fingers and pedicured toes crossed that it will be Senator Harris. In national conventional news: both the Biden and Trump campaigns announced that their candidates will accept the nomination from a remote location. Finally, The Candidate Forum is finally recovered enough from Mr. Donald Trump's jaw dropping, logic defying, eyeball rolling Axios/HBO interview with Johnathan Swan in which the president rambled on about the United States' mortality rate, COVID-19 testing, and late Civil Rights icon Representative John Lewis' refusal to attend his inauguration to chat about another subject the president babbled on about: Voting by mail.
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| en.wikipedia.org |
The Post Office is one of the most venerable and reliable institution in the United States. Millions of Americans depend on the service, that is as old as the nation, everyday for fast, efficient, low cost service, pandemic or not. This year registered American voters will have an additional reason to depend on the USPS, to deliver their ballots to their counties' registrar/recorder to be verified and counted. The virus is expected to surge in the fall, overlapping cold and flu season, making in-person voting a potentially lethal activity.
Quick digression: Are you a registered voter? If you are, great, keeping reading this post. If not, stop, go to usa.gov, register now, and then come back to read the post. Do not forget to vote, in person or by mail. Thank you. Now back to our post.
Voting by mail is not something new to American voters. It began with the Presidential Election of 1864. The United States was embroiled in a devastating Civil War. Both Union and Confederate soldiers were far from home and wanted to exercise their franchise. Voting by mail has experienced a recent surge in popularity. Another surge is expected this November as Americans avoid the polls out of fear of contracting the virus. However, we have an incumbent president who is desperately seeking a second term and a Republican party strenuously opposed to making universal vote-by-mail is option for all. The president, never one to miss an opportunity to tweet went as far as to egregiously suggest delaying the election. Quick reminder, The Constitution give the House of Representatives the authority to fix a day and manner of federal elections, not the president. What is the president's exact issue with vote-by-mail?
Mr. Donald Trump has made quite clear that he does not support allowing all registered voters access to mail ballots, this fall, during a pandemic. The president toggles between assertions of mail theft and fraud that frequently have little basis in fact. One example is he claims that ballots would be stolen out of mailboxes, despite scant evidence mail theft over the past 20 years (npr.org; June 22, 2020; date accessed Aug. 5, 2020).
Another assertion he made was "universal access to mail-in voting would boost Democrats and prevent Republicans from winning future elections, despite studies and real-life election results contradicting that theory" (Ibid). Actually seniors, who tend to vote Republican benefit the most from voting by mail.
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| mailomg.com |
Yet another claim, without evidence, tweeted in all caps no less, that foreign countries would print and send
MILLION OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS
IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES! (Ibid)
IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES! (Ibid)
This last theory was floated by Attorney General William Barr in June during an interview with The New York Times, and it is also the same argument dismissed by election officials and experts as preposterous and false (npr.org; June 22, 2020).
Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman (R) told National Public Radio,
Election officials spend a great deal of our time building in security measures,... The idea that people could print millions of ballots either within the country or external to the country, just on its face, is not going to pass muster with an election official (Ibid).
If the claims made by the president of mail theft, fraud, mail-in ballots favoring Democrats, ballots printed by foreign or domestic entities are meritless, then how exactly does it work and what safeguards are in place?
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| Infographic of states with mail-in ballots brookings.edu |
There are two types of mail-in ballot systems: "...universal 'vote by mail' in which states mail ballots to all voters. In most states, however, vote by mail is through absentee balloting in which the voter must request an absentee ballot" (brookings.edu; June 22, 2020; date accessed Aug. 5, 2020). In the last presidential election cycle, nearly one-quarter of U.S. votes (33 million) were cast by either universal mail or absentee ballots. (brookings.edu; June 22, 2020) Take a look at the map on the left. The hexagons in dark blue offer no excuse absentee/mail-in ballots, the hexagons in light blue offer universal mail-in ballots (Ibid). The thought of COVID-derived long lines and large crowds at the polling places has made the mail-in option, in whatever form, a safer alternative to in-person voting in the general election November 3rd, 2020. How does mail-in voting actually work?
In states that offer absentee ballots, the registered voter (go to usa.gov for more information) requests a ballot from their local election authority. In some places, a voter needs a legitimate reason--eg. illness or travel--for the request. In other places, no excuse is necessary or the state, like California, provides an absentee ballot to every registered voter. It is worth noting that many states are moving toward a No-Excuse Absentee ballot (brookings.edu; June 22, 2020). The voter must provide their name and address; the local election authority sends the ballot to the voter's home address with a security envelop for the ballot to maintain confidentiality and another envelope in which the sealed ballot is placed. The voter signs the outside of the second envelope, certifying that he or she is a registered voter (are you?) and away it goes (Ibid).
Once the ballot is received, the local election authority checks the ballot against a list of registered voters and is casting a ballot from the address on file. Once the name and address are certified, the sealed ballot is removed from the second envelope and counted toward the results (Ibid).
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| Rejected ballot nytimes.com |
Mail-in-ballot fraud does happen but they tend to be localized. Case in point, in 2018, North Carolina Republicans were cited for election fraud involving mail-in ballots. A campaign staff member for Mark Harris was indicted for mishandling mail-in ballots and directing other staff members to engage in election fraud. The evidence was overwhelming enough that a federal judge invalidated the results and called for a special election (brookings.edu; June 22, 2020).
If a candidate does believe that fraud has taken place in a particular race, he or she can either present evidence to the local election board or file a lawsuit in local court (Ibid). If there is sufficient evidence, the local prosecutor can indict specific individuals for mail ballot fraud. "It is a criminal offense to forge a name on a mail ballot, impersonate someone else, steal ballots, or deceive someone about their mail ballot" (Ibid).
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University found there is no evidence that mail-in ballots increases election fraud because there are several anti-fraud built into the process intended to make it difficult to impersonate voters or steal ballots. Some of the provisions include "requiring people requesting absentee ballots to be registered voters, mailing ballots to the official address listed on voter registration rolls, requiring voter signatures on the external envelope, and have election authorities make sure the ballot came from the address of an actual voter" (brookings.edu; June 22, 2020). If the ballot appears suspicious, some states uses the signature match technique to verify voter's signature (Ibid).
These safety measures make it difficult to engage in widespread fraud. "You can't request a ballot for a person that is mailed to your address as opposed to that person's official address with the election authorities" (Ibid). Essentially, if someone staked out your mailbox for the absentee ballot to be sent to the registered voters in order to steal your ballot, chances are you would not know what the ballot arrived because voters can request them weeks in advance and the local authorities send them out as the requests come in (Ibid).
Therefore, whatever wild, baseless claims the president and his die-hard supporters make about mail-in ballots is just shouting into the wind. There are states who do insist on in-person voting, allowing absentee voting with a valid excuse. Those are the same states that closed polling stations and have voter id laws all intended to suppress the vote of BIPOC communities. The general election is less than three months away and there is still time to ensure strong safeguards in place to protect mail-in ballots and increasing funding to the United States Postal Service to ensure timely safe delivery of the ballots and your mail. Most of all, send your ballot in as early as mid-October to make sure that your vote is counted.
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