There has been a lot of heat around mail voting recently. To summarize, Democrats are encouraging mail voting for the most part, claiming it makes it more convenient for people and prevents the spread of covid virus. Republicans on the other side claim that mass mail-by-vote will cause a lot of voter fraud and threatens the integrity of the election.
Here is What’s Happening
Before Trump started stirring the pot, there wasn’t any general fear of fraud associated with vote-by-mail. It is interesting to know that in 2016, 20% of the population voted by mail. That’s one ballot in every 5 ballots cast in the nation! Yet, until the 2020 election got around, even Trump didn’t mention fraud in voting by mail.
Research by reputable American universities such as MIT suggests that the amount of fraud is slightly higher when voting by mail as opposed to in person. Yet the difference and the total fraud is such a small fraction that it basically doesn’t matter. The fraud rate for vote-by-mail over the past 20 years is 0.00006%. That’s 6 votes in 10,000,000 votes! Virtually no fraud. Even in 2016 which was a historically close election where Hilary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the electoral votes, the difference in their votes nationwide was around 1 million. So unless you expect the difference in votes between Biden and Trump to be a few dozen, the expected fraud from vote-by-mail will not matter at all.
A challenger could always make the situation more complicated, more unique and speculate things about it. For example one could claim that “because of the pandemic and the higher turnout of vote-by-mail, there is going to be significantly more fraud cases this election”. Or more generally “since it is 2020, there is going to be more fraud cases than before”. We are entering the realm of imagination, dreams and speculation and we cannot objectively discuss these claims as there are no prior statistical data to support it one way or another.
Trump is claiming without evidence that mass mail voting will affect the integrity of the election.
This article is not about convincing you that vote-by-mail will not cause fraud. Let’s say that Trump is genuinely concerned about fraud in 2020 election. I don’t think that’s the case, but let’s assume. Up to this point, everything is fine… as in it is legal. Trump can be genuinely concerned about the integrity of the election and voice his concern. People and states could look at his argument along with everything else they know and decide how to hold the election.
Note that one fundamental design principle in the US politics system is that the federal government has no authority on how the election is held. It is up to the individual states to hold their election. This ensures an Authoritarian federal government will not seize power and turn into a full blown dictatorship.
Oh yes, democracies degrade into dictatorships all the time across the world. What remains is either straight military controlled dictatorship state or hybrid versions where things look like a democracy, people vote, but there is ever one party and one president and everyone knows it. Russia, Turkey, China are samples of this. Nazi Germany is another example of a functioning democracy that got manipulated by a charming patriotic German.
Hitler took over office in a democratic system. By tapping into the Patriotic feelings and disappointments of the German people he could turn the majority of the country on his side and later converted the government into a dictatorship.
So federal government has no say in states voting process and should stay out of it… for the sake of democracy. Hypothetically if a state wanted to send ballots by pigeons, it is their and only their decision.
Donald Trump however does not respect the states’ rights in this matter. By dismantling USPS in the last few months leading to the Nov 3rd election, the federal government is meddling into states’ elections. States have been relying on USPS to deliver votes for more than a century! Travelers, soldiers and others have been voting by mail. As early as the civil war era, soldiers were using mail voting. Now suddenly Donald Trump wants to prevent that.
The new post master general, Louis DeJoy who go appointed by Trump in June, has strong ties with the Republican party and is a Trump mega donor. There have been radical changes to prevent timely processing of mail since he assumed his position. Here are a few changes that are taking place inside USPS which are very concerning:
- Removal of mail sorting machines across the country
- Elimination of overtime for post office employees
- Removal or reassignment of nearly a dozen agency leaders
- Banning postal workers from making extra trips to deliver the mail
- A hiring freeze.
It is interesting to know that delaying mail purposefully (among other things) is a crime according to the US law. But as we have seen in the recent years, breaking the law doesn’t have real consequences for the federal agents.
Another noteworthy incident happened in Florida in which congresswoman Wasserman Schultz was denied access to a USPS facility to observe a mail processing shift. Not letting the state’s congress members visit the USPS? Sounds like a news snippet from North Korea or Iran not from the land of freedom.
Trump’s handling of USPS looks more like manipulating the election than trying to save its integrity. If he cared about fairness and integrity of the election, he should have trusted the local governments with their decisions and not meddle.
Things don’t stop there. On top of that, Trump has encouraged his supporters to vote twice and keeps doing it despite concern that doing so is fraudulent. There will be Americans defending him saying he is joking. There will be Americans that actually vote twice knowing that Trump will support them. Both groups are dangerous for the future of our democracy. According to experts, cheating in elections is hard. It requires intimate knowledge of the election process and the ballot processing in each US district. Something that should be very hard for say a foreign country like Russia, to get access to. If people at the polling station wanted to do fraud, well that’s a different story. Encouraging others to commit voter fraud, is a felony on its own.
How Should We, The American People, Respond?
All the evidence points to the fact that Trump is planning to stay at the White House at all costs. He is trying everything to get re-elected. He is also opening up options to cheat in the election by having his followers commit voter fraud. Lastly, he can claim he lost the election because of fraud and have another attempt at staying in the White House.
The BLM movement is huge in the US. Let’s face it. People (mainly Democrats) go to the protests and inevitably spread the virus. But it is for good reason. The risk to spread the virus a bit to fight systematic racism is worth it. They don’t go out to hold up a bible and have a photo shoot or to have a beach party. This election could mean dictatorship vs democracy. If there is one thing we should risk our lives for, it is got to be freedom and liberty.
Voting in person makes sense. Do it and avoid later complications. Imagine if Trump wins the election by a small margin because USPS lost a few thousands strategic ballots here and there. Imagine if Trump loses the election by a small margin and refuses to leave the white house claiming he actually won! These are scary scenarios that are very plausible.
Voting in person will be safer than the BLM protests. The polling places will implement social distancing measures. The same way we have been able to go to our favorite restaurants, shopping and enjoying the beach, we can vote safely too. Dr Fauci has said there is no reason not to vote in person.
Our democracy is worth more than pity fights and quarrels. WE ARE DEFENDING OUR FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY HERE. And trust me, a dictatorship will be a hundred times harder, crueler and more unjust than Trump’s presidency.
If you think my concern is super superfluous, that the US political system has lasted 250 years and will survive this time around too because of some inherent property in it, that people worse than trump have tried before, I strongly disagree with you. The US political system is on the verge of collapsing into an autocracy. Read this article for a more in depth discussion of it.
Final Thoughts
Vote by mail early, if your ballot isn’t counted by the election day, go vote in person. Even if it is illegal, the president has told his followers to do it. It is ok if you do it too. Abiding by the law won’t help if the one’s who enforce the law are the ones breaking it. Once we lose our democracy, it won’t be easy to take it back. Democracies are fragile, they collapse into the hands of dictators all the time but you won’t find many examples of them forming. Don’t let it happen this time around. US deserves better.
Peace.