Voting by Mail is Safe and Unbiased, but Labor Intensive
Mail-in voting has been a hot topic of conversation lately, particularly as the timelines for reopening state and local businesses becomes muddled amid increases in coronavirus infections. It’s a topic that we briefly touched on in the past when looking forward to the upcoming presidential election.
Over the weekend, a National Academy of Public Administration working group published their thoughts on this method of voting, saying that if done properly, it’s a method that will keep Americans safe from both voter fraud and infection risks. The long and short of it is that changes will need to be made, including to mail-in voting, to ensure the safety of voters, and it will require federal funding to work well.
Voting by mail has almost overnight become a deeply partisan issue, with some Republicans, most notably President Trump, decrying the process as an invitation for fraud. Despite this, many Republican strategists and campaigns, particularly those that have been active in primary season, have been getting the word out to their constituents about the vote by mail process. The worry is that strong messaging about the problems with mail-in voting could discourage voters who really need the service from using it.
The research has shown that while voter fraud is a very serious issue, it’s not something that has been witnessed at a widespread level. When voter fraud does occur, it also appears that it has a good track record of being prosecuted. In the past 20 years, the Heritage Foundation tracked that there have been 1,200 allegations of fraud that led to 1,100 criminal convictions. Looking solely at mail-in ballots, there were only 204 allegations and 143 convictions. This figure stands next to approximately 250 million mail-in votes that were cast during the same timeframe.
While occurrences of fraud are low, parties may also worry that expanding vote by mail and other types of convenience voting programs might benefit one group or another. Studies in LA County, Colorado, and Oregon have all indicated that vote by mail doesn’t disproportionately advantage one political party over another.
Research shows that voting by mail is safe, and that we’ll see a large uptick in it due to the pandemic. Despite what the research says though, Americans have a distrust for the election process in general, for both mail-in and in-person voting methods. A 2019 poll showed that 59% of Americans lacked confidence in the honesty of elections for various reasons. It seems that the best way to increase this confidence is by frequently communicating to voters about methods of voting.
While it’s unlikely that many fraudulent votes will ever be cast, voters were also more concerned that with mail-in voting their votes are less likely to be counted. A 2018 Florida study did confirm that mailed in votes were more likely to be rejected than other votes.
One of the biggest problems for this upcoming election related to voting by mail is the increased legwork it will take to get results. The expected increase in mailed in votes will require extra work from the postal service and need significantly more effort from ballot counters. The country as a whole will also need patience. It’s going to take time to count all these votes and in states like Michigan, the counting can’t even start until election day. So while we should feel safe in the integrity of the results of the election, it may be several days after election day that we finally see a result.
