Should mailing in your ballot stay as easy as it is right now?

• O

  Omar1d ago

  I'm 74 years old. I have congestive heart failure. Standing in a line for two hours is not a civic exercise for me, it's a medical risk. Mail voting isn't a convenience, it's the only reason my vote has counted for the last six years. You want to talk about who gets silenced? Start there.

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• NK

  Noah K.1d ago

  I ran a county election office for eleven years in a swing state. Here is what I know: mail ballot rejection rates, when properly administered, run below one percent. The signature verification process is genuinely rigorous. What the new USPS rules would have done is slow delivery times in ways that would have caused ballots to arrive after the deadline through no fault of the voter. That's not security. That's voter suppression with a postal meter stamp on it.

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• H

  Hana19h ago

  My polling place closed in 2020 and the nearest one is now 22 miles from my house. I live in a rural county. No bus. One car between me and my husband and he works six days a week. Mail ballot is not a luxury for me. What is the plan for people like me, seriously, what is the actual plan?

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• D

  Diego1d ago

  To the person saying "chain of custody is longer" — do you apply the same logic to absentee ballots that Republicans have been mailing in since the Reagan era? Because those are the exact same thing. The word "mail ballot" didn't become suspicious until it became associated with higher Democratic turnout. That's it. That's the whole story.

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• E

  Elena1d ago

  The receipt idea is actually more interesting than people give it credit for. Several states already have ballot tracking systems where you can confirm your mail ballot was received and counted. It's not a perfect system but it's a real answer to "how do I know it worked." Worth expanding nationally instead of just screaming at each other.

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• J

  Jordan8h ago

  That's actually the most honest version of this argument I've seen. The concern isn't fraud, it's USPS reliability. Which is a legitimate operational concern. Which is also exactly why a court blocking rules that would have made delivery slower is the correct outcome.

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• T

  Taylor1d ago

  The 7-2 margin should tell you something. This wasn't a close call. When Kavanaugh and Roberts both side against an administration's policy, maybe, just maybe, the policy was constitutionally indefensible and not some principled stand against fraud.

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• N

  Nina23h ago

  Appreciate the honesty in that last comment. That's genuinely rare here.

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• JT

  Jordan T.5h ago

  Nobody has mentioned yet what happens to mail ballots when someone moves and doesn't update their registration. That's the real gap in the system and I've never heard a clean answer to it. Not fraud exactly but not clean either. Someone explain this to me.

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• K_

  Kofi _x14h ago

  Right, but the answer to "that's a different problem" can't always be "therefore your vote is your problem." At some point you have to reckon with the world as it actually is.

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• NB

  Nina B.1d ago

  ok but can we at least agree that ballot harvesting is a real problem that needs real guardrails regardless of how you feel about mail voting in general

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• D

  Drew1d ago

  "Ballot harvesting" is a phrase that means different things in different states. In some states it's illegal, in some it's not. Treating it like it's one coherent national problem is sloppy. If you disagree, explain how you square that with the fact that the GOP itself was caught doing it in North Carolina in 2018. Real question.

  28Reply
• P

  Priya12h ago

  Heritage Foundation — not exactly a liberal outfit — maintains a database of election fraud cases. Mail fraud cases in it are a tiny fraction of total cases, and total cases are a tiny fraction of ballots cast. Look it up. It's their own data.

  26Reply
• TB

  Theo B.20h ago

  it literally is a gotcha though? if the system works for soldiers voting from overseas it can work for a nurse voting from her kitchen. the logistics are the same.

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• EK

  Elena K.3h ago

  Moved twice in three years and dealt with this directly both times. First time my old ballot was mailed to my old address and obviously I didn't get it. Second time I'd updated in time and it worked fine. The gap is real but it's a registration database problem, not a mail voting problem. Fix the databases. Most states are getting better at this actually.

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• H

  Hana1d ago

  2018 is not "a long time ago" my guy

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• K_

  Kofi _x6h ago

  If easier voting automatically helped Democrats Republicans would have killed absentee voting in every state they control by now. They haven't. Because plenty of Republicans, especially older rural ones, vote by mail too. The partisan framing on this is more complicated than cable news makes it look.

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• KL

  Kofi L.14h ago

  The confidently wrong take I keep seeing in this thread is that fraud via mail is somehow easy. It is not. Your signature is compared. Your address is verified. In many states your ballot envelope has a unique barcode. Stuffing a mail ballot box at scale would require a conspiracy so large it would inevitably collapse. The fraud that has actually been prosecuted in recent cycles is almost entirely in-person.

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• J

  Jordan19h ago

  The 7-2 ruling doesn't mean mail voting is perfect. It means the administration's specific restrictions were legally untenable. Those are two different statements and I wish people on both sides could hold that distinction in their heads for five minutes.

  14Reply
• YT

  Yuki T.7h ago

  We should be making it easier to vote, full stop. I don't care what mechanism. Same-day registration, extended early voting, mail ballots, whatever. A country where only 55 percent of eligible voters participate in a presidential election is not a healthy democracy and we should all be embarrassed about it regardless of party.

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• HS

  Hana S.1d ago

  every extra hand is a reason to doubt the count. that's just true. i'm not saying fraud is rampant, i'm saying the chain of custody is longer and that matters.

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• S

  Sam1d ago

  I changed my mind on this one over the last few years and I want to be honest about it. I used to think in-person voting was the only legitimate kind. Then I watched my sister vote by mail from her Army base overseas for three cycles without a single issue and I realized I'd been arguing from vibes, not evidence.

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• RR

  Riley R.1d ago

  Nope. Not even close to the same thing in every state.

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• T9

  Taylor 9210h ago

  i trust the post office about as far as i can throw it after the pandemic slowdowns and that's my whole concern summarized

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• M

  Morgan21h ago

  military votes have always been treated differently that's not a gotcha

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• T

  Theo1d ago

  the north carolina thing was a long time ago

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• IL

  Iris L.16h ago

  that situation is a problem with polling place consolidation not with whether mail voting should exist

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• R

  Ravi1d ago

  honestly i just want to know my vote got counted. mail or in person i dont care. give me a receipt. something. anything.

  6Reply
• R2

  Ravi 2113h ago

  source?

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