Why is it that most developed countries ban mail in voting?

[kindy64]

So, why are the Democrats pushing mail in voting? If advocates can march in protest at the P.O.G.s house, then why can't they show up to vote?

If we can go to Walmart, stand in line and punch a little keypad that is shared by everyone and in frequently washed, why can't we go vote, stand-in-line and punch a larger screen...

https://www.independentsentinel.com/most...te-buying/

“If concern about vote fraud with mail-in ballots is delusional, it is a delusion shared by most of the world,” John Lott, the report’s author, writes.

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Most developed countries ban mail-in ballots unless the citizen is living abroad or require Photo-IDs to obtain those ballots. Even higher percentages of European Union or other European countries ban mail-in ballots for in-country voters.

Among OECD (members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries besides the United States, the report states that 78% of the countries either do not allow mail-in ballots “for people living in the country” or require a photo ID to get a mail-in ballot. In the EU, 85% of countries either bar mail-in ballots for people not living abroad or require a photo ID for such a ballot, according to the report. And every European country that is not a member of the EU has mail-in policies that fall into that category.

In addition, some countries that allow voting by mail for citizens living in the country don’t allow it for everyone. For example, Japan and Poland have limited mail-in voting to those who have special certificates verifying that they are disabled.


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France banned mail-in voting in 1975 because of massive fraud in Corsica, where postal ballots were stolen or bought and voters cast multiple votes. Mail-in ballots were used to cast the votes of dead people. There are many other examples.

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Also, the U.S.P.S. delivers more Christmas cards and packages then there will be ballots by mail, why does anyone think their performance will be any better than that.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opini...ost-office

In the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, the $2 trillion relief measure passed in March, Congress gave the Postal Service a $10 billion borrowing authority. After the bill became law, there were negotiations between the Postal Service and the Treasury Department on the terms of the borrowing; a deal was announced in July. The ability to borrow $10 billion, the postmaster general said, would "delay the approaching liquidity crisis."

That was all the aid for the Postal Service in the CARES Act. Completely separately, the bill also gave $400 million to something called the Election Assistance Commission for distribution to states to "prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally, for the 2020 federal election cycle."

The House HEROES Act would give $25 billion to the Postal Service in what is essentially a bailout. The bill mentions nothing about helping the Postal Service handle the upcoming election or any other election. Indeed, the only stipulation at all placed on the $25 billion is that the Postal Service, "during the coronavirus emergency, shall prioritize the purchase of, and make available to all Postal Service employees and facilities, personal protective equipment, including gloves, masks, and sanitizers, and shall conduct additional cleaning and sanitizing of Postal Service facilities and delivery vehicles." If the House Democrats who wrote and passed the bill intended the money to be spent specifically for elections, they did not say so in the text of the legislation.

Separate from the Postal Service provisions, the bill would give $3.6 billion to the Election Assistance Commission for distribution to states "for contingency planning, preparation, and resilience of elections for federal office." There has been some confusion about that; some discussion of the current controversy has left the impression that Democrats want $3.6 billion for the Postal Service for the election. In fact, the $3.6 billion would be for the states' election use. In neither the CARES Act, which is now law, nor the HEROES Act, which has been passed by the House but not the Senate, is there any money given to the Postal Service specifically for the election. In any event, the Postal Service has the capacity to handle the election and does not need any additional money specifically to do the job.

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There is also the fact that the Postal Service does, on occasion, fail to deliver the mail. In its annual reports, it includes data on "performance outcomes." For example, for first-class mail, which is the type of mail that would be most employed for election purposes, the goal in fiscal year 2019 was to deliver 96% of letters in one to three business days. Its actual performance was 92%. So 8% of first-class letters were not delivered on time. Now, consider that the Postal Service handled 54.9 billion pieces of first-class mail in fiscal year 2019. That is more than 4 billion pieces of first-class mail that were not delivered on time. And that, in a fraught political situation, could be the basis for a lot of anecdotes in news articles.

Many of those anecdotes, by the way, appear to have made it to the media with the help of the Postal Service unions. 

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The paper obtained letters from Postal Service leadership to various states informing them that some of their election deadlines are "incongruous with the Postal Service's delivery standards." The resulting "mismatch," the Postal Service said, "creates a risk that ballots requested near the deadline under state law will not be returned by mail in time to be counted under your laws as we understand them." In other words, several states are not giving the Postal Service long enough to deliver a ballot to a voter and then deliver the filled-in ballot to the state election board. For example, if a state's law allows a voter to request a ballot seven days before the general election but also requires that votes must be received by election day to be counted — that would be a recipe for a lot of votes not being counted. It was an entirely reasonable concern on the part of the Postal Service, and it is a problem more for the states than the Postal Service. Yet media discussion of the story suggested it was just another chapter in what one source in the Washington Post account called "the weaponization of the U.S. Postal Service for the president's electoral purposes."

[InbetweenDreams]

So, why are the Democrats pushing mail in voting? If advocates can march in protest at the P.O.G.s house, then why can't they show up to vote?

So, are you saying only democrats push mail-in voting? Perhaps many of those advocates will show up in person to vote, some might have to do an absentee ballot. Some people might actually work. I used to work for an employer who refused to allow us employees to leave to go vote, perhaps it was politically motivated (also turns out he didn't pay the social security taxes he withheld from our checks but nothing I can do about it now...that's another story).

I could ask a similar loaded question such as why do republicans engage in voter suppression? 100,000 voters were purged in Georgia before the 2018 mid-term election.

If we can go to Walmart, stand in line and punch a little keypad that is shared by everyone and in frequently washed, why can't we go vote, stand-in-line and punch a larger screen...

https://www.independentsentinel.com/most...te-buying/

Voting fraud happens, regardless of how you cast your ballot. Oregon has been doing it since 1981 and there seems to not be that many cases. Although one could argue those are just the ones who didn't get away with it. I pointed out in another thread that voting machines have their own share of issues. They can malfunction, subject to hacking and so on. At any rate, voting fraud with mail in ballots is rare.

One thing I will mention. The more red tape you have to go through to vote, the less people vote and the people who don't vote are often those who are already disenfranchised.

Yes we can stand in line at Wal-Mart but when it is an 8 hour wait to vote is a bit ridiculous wouldn't you agree? Moscow Mitch's state, Kentucky reduced its polling places from some 3,700 locations down to 200. Don't you think that's a big jump. The article doesn't explain or speculate the reasoning behind it but for a state having 4.4 million people I'd say there's going to be some very long lines in some places.

Fortunately for me and possibly for you @"kindy64" waiting in line to vote isn't an issue. I live in a rural county with 10,000 people, I can literally walk in, get a ballot, fill it out and shove it in the machine, get my sticker all in a span of 5 minutes, but that's not the case for many people.

I have yet to see a whole lot of voter fraud concerning mail in ballots in the US. Maybe France had issues and without knowing France's politics, their election process or how they handled mail-in ballots I really can't comment on it. What I can say is that of states that allow mail-in voting, the people who try to vote twice appear to get busted.... https://www.summitdaily.com/news/hundred...ter-fraud/

At any rate I think anything we can do to get more citizens to vote the better. Likewise, there should be measures in place to prevent fraud and from what I can tell the measures in place seem to be working. I think states that want to do mail-in ballots should do so and perhaps turn to states that already do it. 1 in 2,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 so I think it is fair to give people more options on casting their ballot and to do so safely.

[kindy64]

How many cases of fraud are acceptable? How many missing or undelivered ballots are acceptable?

I have no problem with absentee voting. I have no problem with a state transitioning to some sort of mass ballot by mail system.

I do have a problem with changing the rules in the midst of an election without any increase in the infrastructure to count ballots. You can't change a system (run by the government) in months and expect the same results.

Even if there were no fraud, the amount of errors is greater than the margin the winner gets. IE. if the winning candidate had a 3% margin of victory, but if there is a greater error/undelivered ballot rate, then that effects the election.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/nyreg...fraud.html

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl...43033.html#!

Between 2012 and 2018, 28.3 million mail-in ballots remain unaccounted for, according to data from the federal Election Assistance Commission. The missing ballots amount to nearly one in five of all absentee ballots and ballots mailed to voters residing in states that do elections exclusively by mail.

States and local authorities simply have no idea what happened to these ballots since they were mailed – and the figure of 28 million missing ballots is likely even higher because some areas in the country, notably Chicago, did not respond to the federal agency’s survey questions. This figure does not include ballots that were spoiled, undeliverable, or came back for any reason.

Although there is no evidence that the millions of missing ballots were used fraudulently, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which compiled the public data provided from the Election Assistance Commission, says that the sheer volume of them raises serious doubts about election security.

[InbetweenDreams]

So @"kindy64", the problem isn't really with mail-in ballots it is the security and integrity of our election, because here we have an example of mail-in ballot fraud and I've cited examples of the same problems with voting machines themselves.

Asking a question like how many cases of ballot fraud are acceptable is like asking how many deaths from COVID-19 are acceptable. Of course the answer is none. The problem is not matter how you look at it it is inevitable.

So, how how many people dying from COVID-19 to go cast their ballot is acceptable? How do we stop voter suppression and gerrymandering?