Mail in Ballots
 

I am not against mail in ballots. However, I think that there should be a requirement that they should be requested. That way a need is expressed, a current address is provided, and an opportunity to insure that the requester is properly registered can be verified.

Simply mailing to everybody creates an needless opportunity for confusion and abuse.

From the beginning of this country, voting has been a right that must be personally performed. Choosing not to vote is your decision. A vote should be private. Nobody should know my vote. All votes should be collected by the vote deadline. Votes delivered after the vote deadline should be nullified. Otherwise my vote is essentially known.

One thing for sure, is the losing candidate will claim voter fraud whatever method is used.
Default mode for all post election analysis in this day and age!

Being retired Military, I voted absentee over my career. Was my vote suspicious and should it have been considered fraud? :ohdear:

Only if you voted blue!:icon_wink:

No, it doesn't. And thank you for your service!

However, when Willie Sutton was asked "Why do you rob banks?", his reply was "because that's where the money is."
Over the years, mail in voting was such a small percentage of the total vote that it wasn't worth the risk of committing voter fraud. With that percentage increasing greatly, I'm afraid it may become an easy target. I feel the same way about "early voting". Two or three days, yeah, OK, but 30 days? A lot can be revealed in 30 days prior to an election---perhaps a candidate might be charged with murder or rape. Sounds a little far fetched? Remember not to long ago a candidate could have (and IMHO should have) been charged with felony violation of the National Security Act. Once those early votes are cast, they can't be taken back. And 30 days gives plenty of time to run fraudulent votes through the system. I'm not saying it WILL happen, but is it worth the risk? We all know who benefits from the dead and repeat votes already.

Let's be clear, mail-in voting is not the problem. There is nothing wrong with the concept. Never has been and never will be. The issue is verifying/validating that any given voter is authorized to vote and is who they say they are. If Congress (and the states) would take that issue seriously then we would not be talking about mail-in voting at all.

Talking about voter fraud: what system have we ever had that hasn't been decried for the potential for voter fraud? I'll admit there are elections that have been impacted due to voter fraud over the years but those are very few. In many, but not all, of those cases the votes were coerced yet legally cast.

In this whole debate we've lost sight of the facts which seems to be all too prevalent lately. When we don't have facts to support our position we make stuff up that can't be easily proven/disproven. When we have data but that data doesn't support our position we obfuscate the issue such that data becomes irrelevant and we appeal to emotions to supersede logic.

Those that have the legal right to vote should be allowed to vote by any means available. We should not be making it hard for anyone to vote as a means to influence elections. What we should be focusing on is using the vast array of technology available to us to ensure those who vote are entitled to vote and that their vote is in fact theirs. The reason we are not doing this is it removes an excuse for the losing side to obfuscate the facts and create uncertainty. This has not changed since the earliest days of elections in this great country. Bad actors have been trying to influence the will of the people through nefarious means since day one.

The simple fact that we are debating mail-in voting says the politicians have succeeded in planting seeds of doubt in the process without ever producing one single piece of data to prove that mail-in voting is the issue.

Sad commentary when in this high technology age, when a company like Fed Ex can out of millions of packages know where every package is to the minute, yet we cannot develop an accurate and fraud resistant mechanism to vote. Just another reminder of the inability of government to be better at something than the private sector.
PS: If counterfeit money can be made, producing a fake ballot will be simple.

The issue is not whether we can develop an accurate voting system. The real issue is that many people don't want an accurate system.

Mail in ballots are considered suspect.
They are only scrutinized and counted when the election is close enough.
Hence the big to do a couple of years ago when the ballots from overseas military were late being delivered and returned.

We will be finding bags of ballots for years to come. Such a shame but we are turning into a 3rd world country.

Absolutely right. Guaranteed that no matter how the vote goes down the election will end up in the Supreme Court.

"Let's be clear, mail-in voting is not the problem. There is nothing wrong with the concept. Never has been and never will be. "

Rubbish!

Voting is THE foundation of our republic.

See here

Is it too much to ask that a voter MUST produce a picture ID, in person, to vote? In my mind NO!

If our president does it, what can be wrong?

Very nice summation of the real issue!!!

A nationwide effort is underway in at least 16 states to overturn restrictions on mail-in voting and third-party ballot harvesting. States where suits have been filed include the swing states of Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

click here for the article


If this is adjudicated in their favor then your ballot, which you lawfully and dutifully cast, can easily be compromised.

My concern is that a ballot is/should be like money. If you are "eligible" you are entitled to one. You go to the polls and show your ID and receive one. If you go a second time, the record would show that you already had your one vote. If you request a mail in ballot , you get one. There should not be an uncontrolled mass distribution sent to "Current Residents" like an advertisement.
If states can insure the control of such ballots to insure the one per person rule is maintained in each voting district, show the plan. Show how all districts are prepared to verify, count and report results in a timely manner. No bags showing up weeks later.

How did you equate mail-in voting with anything the article references? Nothing in the constitution speaks to HOW people are enabled/allowed to vote. You're doing exactly what I said folks do - obfuscating and changing the debate to something totally unrelated to the issue.

I also don't understand why you would reference an article from the Atlantic to support a typically conservative view of voting rights? Me thinks you may not have understood the point of the article.

Do not understand why people are not required to show proof of citizenship to vote.

I’m a person who liked to vote on Election Day.there were 57.2 million voters who voted early in 2016 and many of them were people I knew here . I didn’t hear any of them including the president complain about the early voting , but now all I’m hearing is complaining from the same people about fraudulent voting hmmmmm

Good question - tell me the last time you were required to show proof of citizenship when you voted? Just to be clear - a driver's license is not proof of citizenship. My guess is the overwhelming majority of voters have never been asked to show proof of citizenship.

The entire brouhaha started when dozens of polling places in minority areas were shut down by state governments, and then minorities trying to get rides to areas away from their homes were not allowed into the other polling places. Some disabled people were instructed to NOT get on the bus that would take them to a distant polling area.

In some states, there were only 2-3 polling areas in an entire county to serve hundreds of thousands of people, because the GOVERNMENT shut down the other polling places ON Election Day.

Meanwhile, in states where absentee voting was allowed, voting took place anyway. And NO confirmed mail fraud AT ALL in those areas.

The red herring is the notion that mail fraud is even a thing with absentee voting. It isn't.

You will confuse the "prescribed" message by talking facts. Confusing how "made up stuff" somehow becomes fact to many.

Thanks for staying in reality

Because there are a lot of people who want non-citizens to vote.

"The entire brouhaha started when dozens of polling places in minority areas were shut down by state governments, and then minorities trying to get rides to areas away from their homes were not allowed into the other polling places. "

Baloney, sold to the non-thinking MSM viewing dunderheads by the giant corporations and their major stock holders who benefit from political favors.

You wanna convice me then show me the citations. But, please omit the New York Times and Washington (Huffington) Post.

exactly!!!

I assume there will be a post or two to substantiate this claim, because while the claim is oft heard, NEVER saw anything that would remotely point to your conclusion.

If no substantiation, it is just bunk as it has been over the years.

We just had a government group formed in May 2017 to look into that. It was quietly disbanded with a reason that "the states refuse to cooperate". The basis for forming that group was never
Established beyond claims made during the campaign. Not one ever substantiated.

By the way, IF you can back up your post, you will stand first in line of any legitimate complaint.

Saying the same thing over and over does not make it true....simply speaks to the knowledge and motive of the accusers

No surprise that responses seem to be split along party lines. Personally, I don’t have a problem with absentee ballots. Those are requested and the envelope is signed and the signature must match the one the Board of Elections has on file.That is vastly different than mailing out ballots to all registered voters. Some of those may have died, moved or chosen not to vote. Those “extras” can be submitted by anyone who has access to them. Would those signatures be vetted? Harvesting ballots by operatives of either party presents opportunities to interfere during such a contentious election. If our country does transition to mail in ballots, the process needs to be carefully developed and implemented. I don’t feel we have enough time to create a fair and honest system in the time we have left until November. We should get started now for 2024.

As for proof of citizenship, I had to present my birth certificate when I registered in 1968. Until things changed in recent years, my husband and I managed to to vote on Election Day during regular voting hours. That included years when we worked full time and/or had small children. I do find it rather interesting that some people find a way to wait for hours to buy the latest Black Friday deal, video game, cell phone or sneakers. We seem to think nothing of waiting for hours to get on the latest ride at theme parks but are appalled by the thought of waiting in line to vote. Voting should be at least as important as those things.

Unfortunately, we need to prepare ourselves for the losing candidate and party to find an excuse other than the shortcomings of the candidate to explain away the loss. We will have a victim who will bombard us endlessly with whining about being cheated. These are very sad days for our country.

This has become a political thread if there has ever been one on this site! Close it and delete it!

No one asked for my ID when I voted in the primaries this past year. In person, at the Paradise Rec Center. I gave them my name and address, they smiled and waved me over to another table, where a woman pointed to one of the empty spots at the table where I could fill in my ballot.

I didn't have to show ID or sign anything to match signatures, or give them my birthdate or anything else to indicate that I really was who I said I was.

Praise the Lord, Amen, finally someone with a brain!!!!

No, we all don't know......who does benefit?

What keeps circulating in my mind, remembering all the baseless charges over the past years, as relates to this phoney accusation....

If you don’t have anything nice or truthful to say, say it repeatedly.

This article is too long and dreadfully verbose and confusing. Why should it be so hard to vote? It's a constitutional right! They know that there has been tampering with voting machines, there is less chance to tamper with voting by mail. It's been done since the civil war. Ballots are sent to every military personel in the US and abroad. No standing in line, no babysitter needed, no chance of being exposed to coronavirus. Those ballots are as safe as our Social Security checks, tax checks, personal checks, look at all the years we have paid bills by checks through the mail. We receive pay checks through the mail, transactions are carried on through the mail. Not safe? Baloney! A Democratic method of getting more votes? Double baloney!

There is evidence that demonstrates there is not a partisan advantage of voting by mail. While the availability of vote-by-mail ballots increases voter turnout by 1.9 to 2.4 percentage points, the voting method does not increase the share of turnout for either Democrats or Republicans, according to researchers.

A study by Stanford University’s Democracy and Polarization Lab compared counties with vote-by-mail programs to those without in the same state. The authors concluded that vote-by-mail programs have "no discernible effect on party vote shares or the partisan share of the electorate.”

Five states have all-mail elections: Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. According to Ballotpedia, 29 states and DC allow voters to cast an absentee ballot for any reason, while 16 states require a valid excuse for requesting to mail in a ballot.

During the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, concerns about the safety of in-person polling places have been raised for the 2020 federal election in November, as well as for summer primary elections. At least 40 people who voted at the Milwaukee polls in Wisconsin's Apr. 7, 2020 primary election have tested positive for coronavirus, raising concerns that voters were forced to put their health at risk to participate in the election.

On Apr. 24, 2020, the governors of New York and Kentucky signed executive orders requiring that every resident be sent an application for vote-by-mail ballots for the states’ summer elections.

The constitution doesn't require proof of citizenship or to present an ID to vote! Just saying....
Maybe it should????

The one's that are asking for mail in voting that who, somethings up their sleeves....

There's a big difference between absentee ballots (i.e. you have to request one) vs mass mailouts of ballots. Apples v oranges ...

1. With respect, please allow an explanation of the difference ??

2. Since since there was mail voting, no fraud has happened, although accusation have been leveled with never any substance, so what is the basis for rejecting a method to allow more Americans to vote ?

3. Back before Twitter, Facebook, etc., there was no system for mail in voting. Now we are told Facebook and Twitter are vital.....why label mail in voting as a bad thing ?

4. Why is more participation in our system a bad thing?

5. Why, since the established commission to investigate improper voting was disbanded after 5 months, and the claim of millions of immigrants has been proven to. Be totally false, are we still looking in the haystack ?

I agree that we should all be able to vote by mail. I for one have no desire to wait in long lines for who knows how long, when I can easily drop my ballot in the mail, and now with COVID 19, why on earth would you want to. I do however, believe the vote should be counted as long as it is postmarked before voting begins. My son lived overseas and he didn't get his ballot in time, even though he requested it way in advance. Michigan has already sent out a request form if you desire an absentee ballot. This seems to make much sense. Glad postage will also be included.
Voting by mail has been going on for years in some states and there hasn't been any reports of abuse, fraud, etc. There was a "voter fraud" commission set up a couple years ago and was dismantled because there was no evidence of fraud or abuse.

Your signature is your proof as long as it matches up with whatever form that was used to register to vote.

Just for the record....

Seventeen states require voters to provide an excuse for voting by absentee ballot.

Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia offer no-excuse absentee voting.

Five states have elections that are held by mail-in ballot.

These states have jurisdiction over voting, thus what is suggested be done and when to overhaul something that has been successful always ?

This is a proven, secure system, and the outcry is extremely....let’s say..suspicious and seems to be a “reason in advance”