What The Hell Is Going On With Mail-In Voting?
The discussion over mail-in voting becoming the standard method of voting this fall has become very heated recently as President Trump has claimed it will increase voter fraud and that we will have to wait for the results over an extended period of time. Despite the typical resistance democrat reaction to discredit anything the president says there are many serious concerns about the efficacy of putting together a nationwide, unpiloted, mail-in voting election in just a few months in the midst of a health and economic crisis. With the Iowa Caucus Debacle of 2020 and concerns over tens of thousands of mail-in ballots being thrown out in New York Primaries fresh in our minds the concerns over voting methods and accuracy shouldn’t be taken lightly. Of course, this isn’t to say that mail-in voting as a method in a normal time, and given time to develop state-by-state is a bad idea but that of course isn’t the situation we are in right now. So what are the major concerns over mail-in voting in the 2020 election, is there another option, and would we even have time to figure it out at this point?
To start, the biggest problem with mail-in voting this election is that we simply aren’t prepared.
To start, the biggest problem with mail-in voting this election is that we simply aren’t prepared. I happen to live in one of the few states that have been doing mail-in voting for a long time, Utah. It works great here, we have the machines to help speed up the process, our county clerks know how to use them and are used to setting up elections for both mail-in ballots for anyone who has opted in and in-person voting. The people know how to vote by mail because we have been doing it for a long time, no concerns over ballots being thrown out by the thousands due to simple mistakes like not signing or lacking a postmark (which isn’t even required here at all). But even here our county clerks made sure to make us aware that even they were being overloaded and were busier than usual due to switching over to a complete mail-in election for the gubernatorial primaries. If a state that has been doing mail-in voting for a long time is even feeling the pressure of switching over to 100% mail-in so quickly in a state primary, imagine what could happen in states that have never done mail-in voting at large in a general presidential election.
It would have been amazing if we already had it set up during this pandemic.. But we didn’t.
What’s so frustrating is that the Democratic party, likely largely due to the fact that Trump is talking about it, is completely ignoring the problem. Part of this comes from the history of the Democratic party trying to pass mail-in voting. Which, again, is a great system and works well. It would have been amazing if we already had it set up during this pandemic.. But we didn’t. Now, to be fair, I’m sure the states and national parties are doing everything they can to make sure the process runs as smoothly as possible but as we saw in the case of the Iowa Caucuses even a system that had years to prepare can experience major problems from even minor changes in method.
Another frustrating part of this is how Donald Trump has handled his criticism. He has decided to block funding to the USPS over a personal, business-like approach, vendetta in a time where mail-in voting may be our best bet. I don’t understand it at all but my view on this can be summed up as: This is not the time. I don’t think there ever would be a time to try to take down something as essential and important as the USPS but especially not in the middle of a pandemic with an election coming up. Even more frustrating is that I haven’t heard the president discuss alternative ideas at all. Which sort of begs the question, do we even have another option?
The constraints of the current situation are very tricky. For one, it is clearly not a good idea to have everyone in the country go line-up or stuff-into a small room with everyone in their area which is what started this conversation to begin with. So that leaves us with the options of mail-in voting or voting virtually. Voting virtually is completely out of the question in light of fear over foreign interference and again, the example the Iowa caucuses gave us that government can’t be trusted to build even a functional, let alone secure, system that relies on technology to process votes in this short of a time frame. Not to mention that this discussion would likely be even more politically charged. This brings us back to mail-in voting but this doesn’t mean we’re hopeless.
If we could assure that everyone could get their ballots, which the government should be pretty good at, if anything, then all we have to do is get around the problems of returning them.
First, to break down the problem with mail-in voting, it is mostly a problem with returning ballots not receiving them. If we could assure that everyone could get their ballots, which the government should be pretty good at, if anything, then all we have to do is get around the problems of returning them. A lot of the concern is over the mail losing the ballots or postmarks not being included, so what if we set up ballot boxes as city halls nationwide and required people to deliver their ballots there within a certain time frame. Close the boxes at the end of election day so there are no concerns over late ballots and you’ve essentially run an extended, socially-distanced, typical election. This doesn’t address the concern over voter fraud however voter fraud is very untypical for mail-in elections, this is something the president has made seem a bigger problem than it truly is. A recent compilation of mail-in voting data showed that there were only 491 cases of fraud out of hundreds of millions of votes.
..so what if we set up ballot boxes as city halls nationwide and required people to deliver their ballots there within a certain time frame. Close the boxes at the end of election day so there are no concerns over late ballots and you’ve essentially run an extended, socially-distanced, typical election.
I believe this system would work and would be the smoothest and most effective way to run the election in November, but would we even have time to set it up? Since we have already started moving towards largely voting by mail, yes. The most complicated parts of setting up a mail-in election would be removed since it would be a mail-out, drop-off election. It would then just be on cities across the nation to set up their locations for drop-off and let everyone know where they are which is entirely doable over the span of a couple of months. County clerk offices would have an easier time counting ballots because they’d have them all in one place at the end of election night and they would be able to report the results likely just a little later than normal due to the different layout of the drop-off ballot if not within the same time-frame.
Unfortunately, I have very little hope to see this implemented. November will likely come and go as a dumpster fire and we may end up with skewed election results and never know in what way or just how skewed they were. Both parties are setting this up to be a disaster by politicizing the one thing, if we could only pick one, that shouldn’t be politicized, our voting process. On one side the Dems are ignoring any problems and on the other Trump is making the problem worse and making some problems seem bigger than they are. And neither side is suggesting any solutions. Unfortunately as Americans we are used to this being the way things go. Our politicians are performers and corporate panderers who don’t get anything done the people need or care about. But maybe just this once we could figure out this simple solution? We have to hope.
