> Mail-in ballots are particularly prone to fraud, something the New York Times worried about back before Trump.
This is mischaracterization of the article.
1. The title that shows up in the browser bar (the HTML <title>) is: "As More Vote by Mail, Faulty Ballots Could Impact Elections".
2. The title as shown on the page is "Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises". So, clearly, the article speaks about both fraudulent and faulty ballots. In my view, the article is not well organized. The two ideas are too fluidly mixed.
So, with this context in mind, let's discuss two paragraphs from the article:
In 2008, 18 percent of the votes in the nine states likely to decide this
year’s presidential election were cast by mail. That number will almost
certainly rise this year, and voters in two-thirds of the states have already
begun casting absentee ballots. In four Western states, voting by mail is the
exclusive or dominant way to cast a ballot.
The trend will probably result in more uncounted votes, and it increases the
potential for fraud. While fraud in voting by mail is far less common than
innocent errors, it is vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud
that has attracted far more attention, election administrators say.
Yes, the article says "voting by mail [...] increases the potential for fraud". However, how often is this an
important factor? How often does it affect election results? From what I understand, the overall fraud rate from in-person voting is so low, that even a doubling of that rate is negligible.*
* Except, of course, in extremely close races.