It feels like voter suppression to me, especially since we know that a lot of liberal leaning folks have “opinions” but don’t necessarily vote.
To be clear — I describe myself as moderate. I’m more fiscally conservative but liberal on social issues.
It feels like voter suppression to me, especially since we know that a lot of liberal leaning folks have “opinions” but don’t necessarily vote.
To be clear — I describe myself as moderate. I’m more fiscally conservative but liberal on social issues.
Because it's bad for their side. Mail in voting massively improves Democratic turnout for a lot of reasons. And when Democrats actually turn out, they win every time. It's the same reason they support gerrymandering and voter ID laws. It has nothing to do with what's "fair" or "democratic" and everything to do with ensuring their ideology doesn't have to hold up in an actual fair election.
Here’s the Brookline’s Institute, a pretty neutral bunch, on fraud: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/06/02/low-rates-o...
Some analysis from first principles on both fraud and bias: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-is-no-evidence-th...
This non partisan group did detailed analysis of two elections, all of Colorado in 2014 and of Utah in 2016 looking at turnout and bias. https://voteathome.org/
If you want more academic work there’s quite a bit of it done by economics and political science profs. Just search for “mail vote bias”
It's a system that is easily abused.
Traditionally, where I grew up, the problem with postal voting was voter intimidation. Recipients would be told by 'community leaders' to bring their ballot papers to a central location where they were completed en masse with the 'correct' choices made and sent back.
Those who declined were physically assaulted.
Even on a less organised scale it is open to the 'head of household' telling the others how to vote.
Anecdotes aren't the same as data and that story certainly doesn't characterize the general practice of mail in voting. Do you have any data on your claim that organized voter intimidation is a widespread problem? Surely something as extraordinary as that would receive major media attention. All the stories I can find are of basically white supremacy group intimidating black voters at in person voting locations.
Head of household voting is a problem, especially with candidates with large differences in support by gender in cohabitating couples.
But accessibility of polling centers is also a problem (for which the only possible excuse is corruption. Trillions of dollars for war machine but almost none for securing the democracy the war machine is supposed to be defending.)
President Trump has explained that the GOP is hurt when it's easier to vote [1]. There are political incentives to make voting difficult.
[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/30/trump-vot...