It's been the method of voting in Oregon for 25 years and Colorado for 10 years, when does the regret start? The current states that have all mail voting are also some of the least religious states in the country, you'd think the religious states would be pushing for it given the scenario you laid out. Colorado also had the second highest voter turn out nationwide in 2020 which supports the claim that all mail voting is good for increasing access to voting.

> ... when they see entire church memberships filling out their ballots together ...

Are you able to cite any evidence for this sort of conspiracy, or is this mainly conjecture? My search came up short. While one can certainly imagine it taking place, particularly in smaller groups, I expect there are both federal and likely also state laws that would make such activities illegal. At the very least, it would seem hard to hide at scale.

> [...] when they see entire church memberships filling out their ballots together, checking each other to make sure they voted correctly, and shunning, expelling, or firing people who don't participate.

That's a felony isn't it?

Couldn't a church just require congregants to send a picture of their ballot from inside a voting booth?

Is there any basis in reality for this?

This is addressed in serious voting systems.

In Sweden you can vote by mail, but it has to be done in a private booth on a post office. You have to show ID, of course.

That means everybody votes secretly, even when voting by mail.

I agree. All those Kamala ads about wives in the polling place defying their misogynistic husbands miss the fact that those controlling husbands would demand that their wives receive mail-in ballots, and then use intimidation and pressure to ensure the vote.

The fact that this is rarely discussed probably means that it rarely actually happens. Political beliefs between husbands and wives are usually quite correlated, I'd imagine.

The issue of maliciously voting for you elderly grandparent may happen, but is probably very very rare.

> Mail-in ballots are worst of all, and the people who advocate for their expansion will regret it when they see entire church memberships filling out their ballots together, checking each other to make sure they voted correctly, and shunning, expelling, or firing people who don’t participate.

Firing people for not cooperating with something that is a crime under both federal and state law is a strategy that…doesn’t work very long for the criminals.

(Giving a large group of people who you don’t trust to vote your way that kind of criminal leverage over you in general is a pretty self-defeating strategy even without the intense incentives produced when you pile termination of employment on top of it.)

Also, near-universal mail-in voting isn’t some novel untested practice. Oregon has been doing it for more than two decades, Washington and Colorado for a decade, and even more states have adopted it between 2019 and 2022.

And now the abuser can just say "show me a picture of your ballot" since we all take our phones into the booth. And the abuser might stand in line and watch to see if you get a second ballot. And you could quickly use photo editing software to fake it, but the abuser might run analysis...

Where is the line of accepted risk?