Should States Be Encouraging Voting By Mail During the Pandemic?

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced that his running mate for this election is to be Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA). With the presidential elections less than 100 days away, the American people are gearing up for Election Day. A question still remains: what is the best way to hold an election during a pandemic? One of the possibilities is to encourage voting-by-mail efforts, which many states are examining as an option. According to Pew Research, 65 percent of Americans support "no-excuse" absentee voting. Nevertheless, there is a partisan divide: Democrats are nearly twice as likely to support voting-by-mail. What I would like to do here is get past the partisan clamoring and examine whether we should push for more voting by mail or not.

1. How many states allow for mail balloting? Those who are against the proposal act as if voting by mail were unprecedented or untested. That's simply not the case. We have allowed for absentee voting for civilians since the late 1800s. There are five states in which voting by mail is the default: Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. Another 29 states allow for "no-excuse" voting by mail. According to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), 31 million Americans (or 25.8 percent of ballots) were casted by mail in 2018.

2. Would allowing for more voting by mail give one party an advantage over the other? Given the partisan divide, I have to ask this question. On the one hand, greater access to voting could increase turnout for young adults, minorities, low-income individuals, all of whom are more likely to vote Democrat. On the other hand, this could provide greater access to voting for senior citizens, who skew Republican. It really could go either way. What do historical data have to say? Four political scientists from Stanford University answered this question. They looked at voting data from 1998 to 2016. Their conclusion is that although there is a mild increase in turnout, it does not favor either party when it comes to election outcome (Thompson et al., 2020). The statisticians over at FiveThirtyEight also explain how the net effects are negligible.

3. Is voting in-person during a pandemic unsafe to the point where everyone should vote by mail? This is the main impetus for those to be in favor for voting by mail. Waiting in long lines, being in tiny voting booths, and using pens shared by hundreds of voters could spread COVID-19. This is certainly plausible.

On the other hand, I remember how liberal media outlets were freaking out in April because the Republican assemblymen were pushing for the in-person voting, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Wisconsin should hold their primaries without delay. A piece in the Atlantic said that voting in public during a pandemic is not compatible with safety. There was sure to be an uptick in COVID-19 cases in Wisconsin as a result, right? Not really. Researchers at Stanford University and the World Health Organization found no detectable surge as a result (Leung et al., 2020). The CDC came to a similar conclusion in July (Paradis et al., 2020).

Granted, Wisconsin is one case study. At the same time, if it were impossible to keep safe with in-person voting, the outcome from the Wisconsin primaries would have been different. As long as we keep the same protocols that we do while going grocery shopping or to a retail store (e.g., face masks, social distancing), the odds of an outbreak of COVID-19 would be low. Plus, if Liberia can conduct elections during the Ebola pandemic, I think the United States could handle this pandemic.

4. Does voting by mail increase the likelihood of fraud? This is a concern commonly held by those on the Right who oppose voting by mail. Theoretically, by-mail voting makes it easier for someone to falsely vote on behalf of someone else or tamper with ballots. The MIT Election Data and Science Lab points out that while it is more likely for fraud to occur for by-mail voting than in-person voting, voter fraud is still an overall rare occurence. How rare? Based on an investigative reporting project funded by the Carnegie Foundation, there were 491 reported cases of absentee ballot fraud between 2000 and 2012. As Snopes illustrates, the methods for tracking in-mail ballots (e.g., Electronic Registration Information Center [ERIC]) have gotten more sophisticated since then.

As the Brennan Center brings up in its analysis on by-mail voting fraud, one is more likely to get struck by lighting than commit mail voting fraud. In short, while it is more likely, the risk of widespread fraud is minimal, even if we reverted the entire system to in-mail voting.

5. How much less likely ballots by mail less likely to be counted? Let's forget for a moment that there are those on the Left accusing Trump of hampering USPS operations in hopes of undermining the election. As I brought up in May, the United States Postal Service (USPS) was having issues before the pandemic began.  Can the USPS honestly handle such an uptick in delivery both in ballots from election officials and back to them? Also, how many ballots will get lost in the mail?

Postal delivery could have a great impact on whether mail-in ballots are counted. For one, there is the issue of undeliverable ballots, i.e., the ballots that were returned the registered voter did not live at the address on file. Of those that were transmitted to voters (as opposed to returned to election officials), 1.4 percent were counted as undeliverable in 2016 (EAC).

Second, the 2020 primaries could give us a glimpse into what that could look like. According to the Associated Press, 1.5 percent of mail-in ballots for California's 2020 primaries received were ultimately rejected, the most common reason being that the ballot was not mailed and delivered on time. Another reason for ballot rejection could be in filling out the ballot. For thousands of Americans, this will be the first time voting by mail. As MIT political scientist Charles Stewart points out, first-time mail-in voters are more likely to have ballots rejected.

How bad is the rejection rate for returned ballots? According to the Election Assistance Committee (EAC), the national rejection rate for 2016 was 0.77 percent (Overview Table 2) and 0.9 percent for 2012 (Table 32). NPR highlights how multiple states, including Virginia, Arkansas, Minnesota and Oklahoma, had rates above 1.0 percent during their 2020 primary elections. And if you want a scary outlier, New York City is rejecting one out of five of its in-mail ballots. But we don't have to use an outlier to make a salient point: If in-mail ballots are done on a large scale, a 1-2 percent rejection rate could make the difference between a win and a loss for a candidate.

Conclusion
My take on the whole debate is this. Both sides of the debate are stoking fear to gain support for their side, whether that is the fear of the pandemic, of voter fraud, or of the erosion of democracy. My main concern is that of delivering the ballots. Absentee ballot rejections rates are high enough during normal election years. Combine that with the disheveled nature of the USPS along with perturbing rejection rates that were high in the 2020 primaries, I am skeptical of the ballot delivery system to be adequate.

Does this mean I want to force everyone to go to the voting booth in-person? No. Does this mean I want mandated by-mail voting? Again, no. Some people will feel more comfortable going to the voting booth because it helps better guarantee that their vote gets counted (plus, it takes pressure off the USPS). Others will feel more comfortable with an absentee ballot because they do not want to risk contracting COVID-19. Each individual should be allowed to assess their own personal risk and make the choice that best fits that situation. State government and election officials should do their utmost to make sure voters have the ability to exercise whichever method of voting works best for them.