Croix Ellison | BEnote Fellow
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Voting in the upcoming presidential election will not be simple, thanks to the pandemic. As the president and most Republicans are quick to criticize (and suppress) various voting alternatives, it is important to look at what the actual facts are.
What is clear is that large numbers of people will opt to choose voting in-person. Additionally, in order to vote safely and effectively, for obvious reasons (namely, to decrease exposure of the coronavirus), a vote-by-mail option will be popular for some. Based on the latest polling from YouGov, an equal number of voters plan to either participate in person or by mail: 38 percent to 38 percent.
However, the extent of mail-in ballot activity will be determined primarily along partisan lines, with a much greater number of Democrats or Democratic Party aligned voters opting for the mail. There is not much difference between the number of Independents planning to vote in-person and those planning to submit their votes by mail.
It’s important to note that, statistically, this year’s first nationwide exercise in large scale mail-in ballots has worked so far in terms of the accessibility of voting and maintaining accurate vote counts. Turnout has also been quite high.
In contrast, in-person polling locations experienced overcrowding and long wait times, due in large part to extensive polling location closures. The remaining polling locations weren’t prepared for high levels of volume. Back in April, for example, at least 52 voters and poll workers present for the Wisconsin Presidential primary were identified as infected by coronavirus. Still, that’s out of more than 925,000 voters who participated in that primary (that’s a little over 0.005 percent).
High Voter Turnout
Ever since pandemic, absentee voting has increased as a way for voters to avoid exposure to the coronavirus. So far, voter turnout has been surprisingly high and mail-in voting has been relatively successful during presidential primaries this year. That has served as a dress rehearsal for the general election phase.
For example, in Florida - a state with some of the largest concentrations in coronavirus cases in the country - a record-breaking 3.9 million ballots were cast, resulting in the state’s highest voter turnout during a primary in 18 years. Similarly, Hawaii also witnessed record high voter turnout in a primary election, with over 406,000 ballots cast and, reportedly, 99 percent submitted by mail.
In order for mail-in voting to work universally, there are still important logistical aspects that must be taken into consideration. Even though voter turnout did not decrease overall, there were some instances in which voters were inconvenienced. There were notable instances in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland where voters - even though they had requested ballots - reported not receiving absentee ballots, were not sent ballots at all or ran out of time to fill out ballot requests. These problems, however, are solvable.
Despite heightened concerns over problems with postal voting, many polling locations actually experienced quite a bit of unforeseen problems. Some states simply weren’t prepared for high volume turnout aggravated by understaffed election offices with improper cleaning supplies and overcrowded rooms that broke social distancing guidelines.
The History Says Otherwise
Many critics of postal voting are pushing the narrative that the voting alternative is something new and unforeseen. Historically speaking, the U.S. has used mail-in ballots since the Civil War. Additionally, five states - Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah - have long instituted successful universal mail-in ballot infrastructure. Mail-in voting systems have been implemented for states individually with 29 states using a “no excuse” mail voting system (mailing in a ballot with no excuse) and another 16 states that use “excuse-only” postal voting (only mailing in a ballot with an excuse).
For many decades, the mail-in voting alternative has been used foroverseas citizens that are temporarily away from home. For example, American military personnel - to this day - use absentee ballots as a perfect voting technique and have been doing so for 150 years with next-to-no cases of fraud or glitches in that system.
Flashing back to a century and a half ago, Abraham Lincoln fought for Union soldiers to vote in the 1864 election while fighting on the battlefield. In response, the opposing party warned of ‘high statistical fraud’ and ‘a scheme to gain political advantage’. Ironically, in a war against COVID-19, we appear faced with a similar scenario today. The government could be using the military's past postal voting techniques as a model in this upcoming election … if it truly wanted to
For overseas voters, the mail-in voting model is very simple. By filling out a fairly user-friendly form, overseas voters can register to vote and request an absentee ballot. Furthermore, there is also an emergency backup ballot if the absentee ballot doesn’t arrive in time and can legally be used for Americans at home in any election in any state.
As elections are run by individual states, some experts and advocates are fighting to make the emergency backup ballot available in the case that a voter does not receive their absentee ballot in time. If the U.S. military is expected to vote routinely by mail, why can’t American citizens do the same?
The Fraud That Isn’t There
Statistically, voter fraud is the problem that’s not there. Voter fraud in the United States is, notably, very rare and the cases of such have been close to none. Generally undetected, any instances of fraud are traceable and extremely hard to pull off. Critics of vote-by-mail who point to voter fraud as a widespread problem can not point to a single study or research indicating that it is. As the Brennan Center reports …
[We] found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. Given this tiny incident rate for voter impersonation fraud, it is more likely, the report noted, that an American “will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.
Fraud can easily be detected by looking for and checking signatures, vote totals, and simple detective work. While the current president claims that universal mail-in voting “is very, very bad” and that “there is no way of getting the votes in accurately” while portraying postal voting as having ‘tremendous’ amounts of fraud, the reality is that mail ballot fraud is nearly impossible to commit.
A study conducted at the Brennan Center for Justice on ‘Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth’ notes that …
Sensationalist claims have circulated this election season about the extent of voter fraud, with some politicians going so far as to tell voters to fear that this November’s election will be “rigged.” Because electoral integrity is one of the elements necessary to making America the greatest democracy in the world, claims like this garner media attention, and frighten and concern voters. But putting rhetoric aside to look at the facts makes clear that fraud by voters at the polls is vanishingly rare, and does not happen on a scale even close to that necessary to “rig” an election.
Democratic Advantage?
Under President Trump, critics of mail ballots have opposed allowing states provide large scale postal voting. President Trump has made numerous claims about mail-in voting being a terrible idea that would not accurately count the votes and additionally claiming that as a result of postal voting, the election will be rigged. Even so, he has publicly admitted that his only reasoning for saying this is that he fears large turnouts from Democrats.
This also raises another question: Is there any evidence that voting by mail gives one party higher advantage?
According to a study conducted by the Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University, based on a traditional in-person election, voter turnout has been convenient for each party more or less equally. However, while voting in a pandemic, there could be different results as illness could disproportionately threaten one party more than the other from casting ballots.
FiveThirtyEight suggests there is no evidence of political party dominance on either side.
If a voter is made aware that the general voting system of an upcoming election is postal voting, campaigns will adapt to this and instruct voters to go by any standards needed to vote. The question of whether mail-in voting benefits Democrats or Republicans can be settled by how much campaigns will effectively organize and encourage potential voters.