Vote By Mail

I've started seeing a lot of people (smart people!) posting things like, "if you can wait in line at the supermarket, you can wait in line to vote," as opposed to using a mail-in ballot. But why?! For one thing, we shouldn't be aiming to congregate at either the supermarket or the polling place. And for another, there are many benefits to voting by mail, whether or not there's a pandemic going on. Several states vote by mail exclusively, and they're still running just fine. This Vox video explains it really nicely, but in case you don't want to watch, I've outlined the main concerns below:


Mail-in ballots are more likely to be used for fraud - Your ballot is tracked the entire time, from the time your request is approved, until it's sent to you, returned, and processed. And think of it this way: if someone does intercept your ballot and somehow tamper with it, they've changed one vote. If someone tampers with a voting machine at your polling place, they could potentially change all the votes cast there.

Your identity can't be verified when you vote by mail - In my state, you have to enter several pieces of personal identification to request your ballot. When you return it, your signature is compared to the signature on file in the roll book. Meanwhile, when you vote in person, a poll worker compares your signature to the one on file and that's it. This wasn't really covered in the video, but I feel like there's more verification that goes into the mail-in ballots than in-person voting.

Voting by mail benefits one party over the other - An April 2020 study by Stanford found that there's no benefit to either party. All mail-in voting does is increase the total number of people who vote (by more than double, in an example from Nebraska used in this video!)

We don't have the infrastructure for mail-in voting - All states already have absentee ballots, and many have optional mail-in voting. We would just need to prepare and scale up capacity for sending and processing these ballots.

What happens if you don't get your ballot - All the states that have mail-in voting also have in-person voting as a backup if a voter didn't receive their ballot or didn't register in time. And in all states, if you haven't returned your mail-in or absentee ballot, you can turn it in on election day and vote at your polling place.

People don't want to vote by mail - An April 2020 Harvard-Harris poll found that 72% of Americans are in favor of holding this year's presidential election by mail.

Besides these, there's also the benefit of convenience. You don't have to worry about taking time away from work, waiting in line, or feeling rushed to make a decision between people you might not be familiar with. You can take your time, research, and vote when it's convenient for you, without making a special trip anywhere but your mailbox.

My state just started allowing voting by mail without a reason this year, and I requested my mail-in ballot in mid-March, well before everyone started recommending it for safety. I don't see why everyone else wouldn't want that safety and convenience, too.