Trump bans voting by mail (with some exceptions) by executive order

[Magical Realist]

Do you feel good about yourself? Having to lie so much?

I feel great. I fixed it for you moron. So how do you feel being proven wrong for the 100th time? Don't you ever get tired of arguing about something you are totally ignorant about?

[Syne]

Lying turd. Everyone can see you edited that post: "3 hours ago (This post was last modified: 1 minute ago by Magical Realist.)"
Do you feel good about yourself? Having to lie so much? @_@

I feel great.

Of course you do. That's who you are.

[stryder]

In this day and age, if people want to vote by mail they should be able to do so.
All they have to do though is ask for a receipt to make sure their vote has been cast correctly.

Perhaps having a government site that you log into to find a coded string that corrolates to a voting slip receipt. (Ideally a record should exist that a vote took place, but it shouldn't identify who a person voted for. Instead it should be an encoded hash which can be paired with the online element to identify that it was received and processed correctly)

If it was done this way then all the voter fraud allegations could be dropped.

[Syne]

In this day and age, if people want to vote by mail they should be able to do so.
All they have to do though is ask for a receipt to make sure their vote has been cast correctly.

That wouldn't detect people placing votes for dead voters, as there's no one to check the receipt. Since each state runs their elections independently, it wouldn't even catch someone who moved from voting in both states. Nor would it catch someone voting for a registered voter who didn't turn out to vote.

[Yazata]

Here in California since Covid, local polling places where voters went to vote have largely been abolished. Ballots are mailed to every registered voter and can be mailed back or placed in ballot receptacles at city halls etc.

At the time they switched to that during covid, it was supposed to be a temporary emergency public health measure. The argument was that it would protect vulnerable old people from being infected at the polling places. Except that, as most of us suspected at the time, it has become permanent. The democratic party is very hostile to the idea of going back to the voting-in-person method, claiming that it would somehow be "voter suppression" (despite anyone physically unable to vote at their normal polling place can request an absentee ballot).

The biggest problem that I see is that many California counties have more registered voters than the census bureau thinks the number of American citizens of voting age is in that particular county.

So who are all those excess "voters"? Remember, the state is sending out ballots to every registered voter.

Probably some of them are non-citizens (who are a significant percentage of the population here in California).

But I suspect another perhaps larger reason might be people who moved but remain on the voter rolls at their old address. When people move, they rarely cancel their voter registration when they leave. (I never did.)

This is going to skew the voter rolls towards those who move a lot, since they will remain registered in multiple locations. And that will bias the voter roll towards renters over home owners and towards younger people over older.

Some people are likely to move from address to address frequently. Think rooming houses near university campuses. Their mail boxes are probably crammed with ballots addressed to people who no longer live at that address.

How many of those ballots are being voted anyway, by the current tenants? Nobody really knows because nobody has tried to find out.

Attempts have been made to clean up the voter rolls and remove voters still registered at addresses where they no longer live. And the democratic party opposed those attempts and got their activist judges to rule that cleaning up the voter rolls once again was "voter suppression".

[Magical Realist]

Some people are likely to move from address to address frequently. Think rooming houses near university campuses. Their mail boxes are probably crammed with ballots addressed to people who no longer live at that address.

It also screens out voters who move around a lot because they never receive their ballots in mail. And trying to vote when you haven't received your ballot by mail is a real hassle. So it works both ways if it even works at all.

"In the case that your ballot isn’t located, you have a few options. First, check if an absentee ballot can be picked up from your local election office. If so, you or a trusted person may be able to grab and drop it off in a ballot dropbox or at your local election office quickly.

The more obvious choice – voting in person – is also an option but comes with a few hoops to jump through. “Most states will require the voter to complete a standard affidavit or another form of documentation confirming that they never received the ballot. Then, the voter will be allowed to vote in-person,” says DeWitt. These affidavits are available at polling places and would be submitted with your in-person vote. “In some cases, voters may have to complete a provisional ballot that will be counted once it’s been verified that the voter did not already vote.” This is the case in states such as New Jersey, Alabama, Texas and California."

[C C]

Despite claims of "Mail-in voting does not significantly advantage either Democrats or Republicans historically", blue shift and positives in close elections hint otherwise. And the partisan outrage itself indicates apprehension of being deprived of an election edge.

Ironically, Democrats might benefit slightly from in-person voting, since postal voting ballots have issues that get them rejected. But some of those depending on postal voting perhaps dislike the inconvenience of in-person voting and might not adjust to the loss (apathetic about voting to begin with). The gain from fewer rejections wouldn't offset the ambivalence toward requiring extra effort to vote.

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Voting by country: United States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting#By_country

It has been argued that postal voting has a greater risk of fraud than in-person voting, though there are few known instances of such fraud. Mail-in ballots pose other challenges, including signature verification, prompt delivery of ballots, and issues that have led to evidence suggesting younger voters, as well as voters from racial and ethnic minorities, are more likely to have their vote-by-mail ballots rejected.
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Blue shift
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_shift_(politics)

In American politics, a blue shift, also called a red mirage, is an observed phenomenon under which counts of in-person votes are more likely than overall vote counts to be for the Republican Party (whose party color is red), while provisional votes or absentee ballots, which are often counted later, are more likely than overall vote counts to be for the Democratic Party (whose color is blue). This means that election day results can initially indicate a Republican is ahead, but adding provisional ballots and absentee ballots into the count can eventually show a Democratic victory.
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Key Takeaways from the vote by mail research
https://effectivegov.uchicago.edu/primers/vote-by-mail

Expanding access to absentee voting leads many voters to choose to switch from voting in person to voting by mail, indicating at least some preference among an important set of voters for voting by mail.

However, expanding access to absentee voting does not seem to increase turnout rates at all, at least where we are able to measure its impact.

Universal vote-by-mail programs tend to increase turnout, although the effect is modest—leading to approximately a 2-to-4 percentage-point increase in turnout.

Universal vote-by-mail does not seem to cause large increases in Democratic vote share, contrary to popular claims. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that it could advantage Democrats in very close races.

Important Questions that the Research Does Not Answer 

What effect does voting by mail have on people’s sense of civic duty, relative to voting together in person, and what factors make this effect larger or smaller?

What effect does voting by mail have on the fairness and security of the election system, and on people’s perceptions of these?

What effect does voting by mail have on how voters aggregate information, if different voters cast their votes at different times, possibly before and after late-breaking information comes out?

[Syne]

Some people are likely to move from address to address frequently. Think rooming houses near university campuses. Their mail boxes are probably crammed with ballots addressed to people who no longer live at that address.

It also screens out voters who move around a lot because they never receive their ballots in mail. And trying to vote when you haven't received your ballot by mail is a real hassle. So it works both ways if it even works at all.

Not really. If you moved, you can request a ballot (and presumably your mailed one is cancelled). But this still leaves ballots from people, who either moved out of state, didn't vote, or died, open to being filled out and sent in by whoever gets it.

And unless voter rolls are cleaned up, most of this is undetectable fraud.

[Yazata]

Some people are likely to move from address to address frequently. Think rooming houses near university campuses. Their mail boxes are probably crammed with ballots addressed to people who no longer live at that address.

It also screens out voters who move around a lot because they never receive their ballots in mail. So it works both ways if it even works at all.

People typically register at their new address when they move, without cancelling their registration at their old address. If the individual is on the lists in two different places, two ballots will go out addressed to the old and new addresses.

So they receive their ballot at their new address and vote it. But what happens to the ballot that went to the old address? It's very easy (albeit illegal) for somebody else to fill it out and mail it in. Determining who did that and making a criminal case against them would be difficult. Especially when those in charge don't really want to know.

[Magical Realist]

It's very easy (albeit illegal) for somebody else to fill it out and mail it in. Determining who did that and making a criminal case against them would be difficult. Especially when those in charge don't really want to know.

And yet as shown already there is zero evidence for this kind of voter fraud in already mail-in voting states. Evidently the motive is simply not there, especially when mailing your ballot makes it so much easier to vote anyway.