Sep 3, 2020 04:02 AM
Democrats Should Curb Their Enthusiasm for Mail-in Voting
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2...ing-407939
EXCERPTS: . . . if President Donald Trump is vociferously against it, Democrats must be vociferously for it, and vice versa. [...] Absentee voting isn’t as secure as in-person voting, but there’s no evidence of widespread fraud, as Trump repeatedly alleges, sometimes in ALL CAPS. Nor is there any evidence that, at least prior to this campaign, mail-in voting has favored Democrats, as the president also believes.
[...] there hasn’t been enough focus on the other side of equation: Does it make sense for Democrats to be such fervent boosters of a process that may lead to a historic number of votes cast in a presidential election not counting? ... there is inevitably going to be more mail-in voting this fall, given fears of the coronavirus. ... But in-person voting is superior. Only about one-hundredth of 1 percent of in-person votes are rejected, whereas rejection rates of 1 percent are common with mail-in votes, and many states exceeded that during their primaries this year.
This should be a five-alarm worry for Democrats. According to polling, almost twice as many Biden supporters as Trump supporters say they’ll vote by mail this year. According to NPR, studies show “that voters of color and young voters are more likely than others to have their ballots not count.”
In another universe, if Donald Trump were urging Democrats to stay away from the polls and instead use the method much more likely to get their votes discarded, it’d be attacked as a dastardly voter-suppression scheme. There are at least three ways that mail-in voting could contribute to a 2020 nightmare...
[...] The primaries have been a mail-in balloting preview. More than a half-million ballots were rejected in the presidential primaries. Ballots are rejected for improper postmarks and signatures, and mail-in voters are also more prone to accidentally vote for more than one candidate or make other elementary errors that are caught and corrected when voting in-person. First-time mail-in voters are most likely to mess it up.
[...] In light of all this, it makes sense to try to make available more options for in-person voting. [...] What should be intolerable is any attempt to change the rules after the fact, although it’s entirely conceivable that Democrats will feel compelled after November 3 to argue that the mail-in voting that they’ve done so much to promote is desperately flawed and unjust... (MORE - details)
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2...ing-407939
EXCERPTS: . . . if President Donald Trump is vociferously against it, Democrats must be vociferously for it, and vice versa. [...] Absentee voting isn’t as secure as in-person voting, but there’s no evidence of widespread fraud, as Trump repeatedly alleges, sometimes in ALL CAPS. Nor is there any evidence that, at least prior to this campaign, mail-in voting has favored Democrats, as the president also believes.
[...] there hasn’t been enough focus on the other side of equation: Does it make sense for Democrats to be such fervent boosters of a process that may lead to a historic number of votes cast in a presidential election not counting? ... there is inevitably going to be more mail-in voting this fall, given fears of the coronavirus. ... But in-person voting is superior. Only about one-hundredth of 1 percent of in-person votes are rejected, whereas rejection rates of 1 percent are common with mail-in votes, and many states exceeded that during their primaries this year.
This should be a five-alarm worry for Democrats. According to polling, almost twice as many Biden supporters as Trump supporters say they’ll vote by mail this year. According to NPR, studies show “that voters of color and young voters are more likely than others to have their ballots not count.”
In another universe, if Donald Trump were urging Democrats to stay away from the polls and instead use the method much more likely to get their votes discarded, it’d be attacked as a dastardly voter-suppression scheme. There are at least three ways that mail-in voting could contribute to a 2020 nightmare...
[...] The primaries have been a mail-in balloting preview. More than a half-million ballots were rejected in the presidential primaries. Ballots are rejected for improper postmarks and signatures, and mail-in voters are also more prone to accidentally vote for more than one candidate or make other elementary errors that are caught and corrected when voting in-person. First-time mail-in voters are most likely to mess it up.
[...] In light of all this, it makes sense to try to make available more options for in-person voting. [...] What should be intolerable is any attempt to change the rules after the fact, although it’s entirely conceivable that Democrats will feel compelled after November 3 to argue that the mail-in voting that they’ve done so much to promote is desperately flawed and unjust... (MORE - details)