> In those two decades there have been hardly a hand-full of convictions for mail fraud related to ballots that entire time, with millions of mail-in-ballots cast. And there are no indications or notions of any subversive fraud.
But that's the objection. Mail in voting is problematic because the fraud is so hard to detect.
Suppose someone obtains and submits a bunch of mail in ballots. Ballots of people who don't normally vote etc. How would they even get caught? "We haven't caught very many of them" is the problem.
> The only reason to oppose mail in voting, much like supporting rejiggering districts (gerrymandering), is to rig the vote.
You could say it's to prevent someone else from rigging the vote.
So if it doesn't really affect the balance of legitimate ballots and only makes fraud more difficult, why would somebody be against it unless they're legitimately concerned about fraud?
I guess I have not seen any factual basis to conclude that mail-in voting is problematic. I get the theoretical argument, and can imagine all sorts of USPS conspiracies to rig the vote, but the fact is we have multiple states that allow mail-in voting, where millions of voters have cast ballots by mail, and both parties have won and lost elections while watching and recounting numerous votes... and there is no indication that this process has been problematic, ever. And certainly no evidence that it is not at least as secure as the voting machines we have, while still facilitating more people voting.
All those articles are about absentee ballots which absolutely nobody in DC is trying to stop entirely. It is how deployed military persons vote. Trump and the republicans are trying to stop States from implementing state-wide voting, or expanding absentee ballots for all citizens which more states are trying to implement due to a friggin’ pandemic. And yes, every system will have people that try to mess with it. But as Oregon’s nearly 2 decades of state-wide-vote-by-mail demonstrates, voting by mail is no more problematic than any other method of voting and it is more convenient for voters.
Were there a persistent, large-scale problem, a small sample over many elections would detect it, but actually the process is that each signature is matched before the inner ballot envelope is moved forward to be counted.
But that's the objection. Mail in voting is problematic because the fraud is so hard to detect.
Suppose someone obtains and submits a bunch of mail in ballots. Ballots of people who don't normally vote etc. How would they even get caught? "We haven't caught very many of them" is the problem.
> The only reason to oppose mail in voting, much like supporting rejiggering districts (gerrymandering), is to rig the vote.
You could say it's to prevent someone else from rigging the vote.
Also, this:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-is-no-evidence-th...
So if it doesn't really affect the balance of legitimate ballots and only makes fraud more difficult, why would somebody be against it unless they're legitimately concerned about fraud?