The gold standard in voting is to vote in person on Election Day while showing a government-issued photo ID to prove eligibility.
That said, eight states conduct elections entirely through the mail — California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont (general elections only), and Washington. Another 27 states, including Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., offer “no-excuse” absentee voting.
In the run-up to the 2020 election, Democrats, unions, and some left-wing organizations made a big push for mail-in balloting. Polling even showed a growing partisan divide over a practice that had favored Republicans in the past. An ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that Republicans intended to vote in person by 79 percent to 20 percent. Democrats preferred to vote by mail, 51 percent to 46 percent.
Ballot Harvesting and Voter Coercion
Voting by mail can allow partisan ballot traffickers to badger voters into giving up their ballot or even allowing them to “help” them fill out their ballot at home before taking it to a drop box.
It’s illustrative to note that in the 2016 and 2017 legislative sessions, as California moved to all-mail-in elections, the majority of Democrats passed two bills that made it legal to pay people to gather mail-in ballots while dropping the requirement that anyone handling a ballot for another person be a close relative or guardian. In 2017, Texas did the opposite, outlawing the practice of paid ballot hauling.
The widespread use of mail-in ballots makes voters vulnerable to intimidation and coercion.
Mail-In Ballot Processing
