Mail-in voting is not new to the United States. However, it has been much more prevalent in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. As of lately, it has been very controversial whether it is wise to vote through mail-in voting or if it is better to vote in person. Mail-in voting varies across states. Some states will send absentee ballots to voters’ homes, others allow voters to request absentee ballots, while the rest of the states require an excuse to vote by mail. Though, in light of COVID-19, some states are permitting all voters an excuse to vote by mail.
President Donald Trump made an argument stating that mail-in voting would lead to fraud, but absentee voting on the other hand was safe and more reliable. This has been repeatedly refuted, and managed to greatly confuse experts. While the terms absentee ballot and mail-in ballot do not have the same textbook definitions, they are essentially the same thing. Absentee voting generally refers to someone who is ‘absent’ or unable to make an appearance in person. Voting absentee has been around since the Civil War era, and usually includes the voter having to make a request to get a ballot. Mail-in voting, on the other hand, is a term used more broadly in terms of the enablement of voters to vote by mail.
Trump’s statement sparked many claims over the issue, with one of them being that absentee ballots require voters to verify themselves while mail-in ballots do not. This claim, however, is false. All votes by mail must be verified and include personal information to be included. The untrue claim made by Trump raised anxieties of the Republican party, who became divided as to whether or not they should vote in person. President Trump told his supporters to vote absentee. Trump evidently called mail-in voting “the greatest scam in the history of politics.” This raises a question; why is Trump so against mail-in voting, when it is so similar to absentee voting?
Rising concern for absentee votes has resulted from a large amount of ballot rejections in Florida. Apparently, over 35,500 ballots didn’t count in the primary. Expert Dan Smith stated that 100,000 mail-in ballots might not ‘make the grade’ by November. This amount of uncounted ballots could make a large difference in President Trump’s reelection chances. According to an analysis done by Florida’s election supervisors, 50% of absentee ballots were cast by Democrats and accounted for 47% of votes that didn’t count. 34% of the ballots were cast by Republicans, however, and made up 31% of votes that didn’t count.
While Democrats and Biden largely advocated for mail-in voting, Democrats recently altered their message to encourage voting in person if possible. This shows that the Democratic party appears to be concerned about absentee ballots, and even Michelle Obama added to her DNC speech she wanted everyone to “vote early, in person if we can.” The conspiracies and statistics that have been circulating make us wonder: How reliable is mail-in voting really? Also, will the amount of uncounted ballots make a large difference in the outcome of the election or will it not have much of an affect in the long run?
Thank you Kirstyn for talking about mail-in voting. This is a topic that will be crucial in the fate of next month’s election. What I think is interesting is the number of people using absentee ballots. According to NYTimes, 31% of registered voters have either been sent ballots or have requested ballots. I think that by getting the Republican party to vote in person, Trump is trying to get as many democratic voters unaccounted for. The majority of people who have voted in the past who are doing absentee ballots this year is Democrat. In New England states, the Democratic percentage of absentee voters is 70-50% whereas Republican’s percentage is below 30%. Even in southern states like Florida, the absentee ballot voting rate is only 32% Trying to make a large number of ballots not count would certainly make a huge difference. If 31% of votes of this 31% voting category did not count, then 21.5 million ballots (10% of total) will go to waste.
ReplyDeleteSOURCE: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/elections/absentee-ballot-early-voting.html
-Aaron Breshears