Mail-in voting could be a logistical disaster - but we must vote anyway

Officials and media pundits alike expect significant logistical challenges with the number of Americans set to vote by mail this November. Source.

Mail-in voting has become the new normal with 40% to 70% of Americans expected to vote from home, but this unprecedented change in civic life brings with it the possibility of a catastrophe. The U.S. postal service has warned 46 states that it cannot guarantee all ballots sent by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted. This has the potential to disqualify tens of millions of votes.

This comes at a time when cost-cutting measures have already delayed mail by a week in some areas and 10% of the Postal Service’s sorting machines have been decommissioned. Despite this, some states anticipate 10 times the normal volume of election mail. Swing states will not be left out of the chaos. Wisconsin voters have requested a record 894,786 absentee ballots, eight times the number of ballots issued in 2016. During the primaries in Wauwatosa, a city less than 10 miles west of Milwaukee, 421 ballots mailed in late June to residents were never delivered and approximately 270 ballots mailed by the city of Milwaukee on June 29 also went missing. Because there are more voters participating in the presidential election than the primaries it can be expected that the logistical mishaps will only be worse. Considering the country has already mismanaged the pandemic with ineffective policy, the logistical carrying-out of the election is ripe to become another 2020 political disaster. 

The situation in Wisconsin is a microcosm of the country: an NPR analysis found that over half a million mail ballots in the primaries this year were rejected due to errors, far more than in 2016.

What can you do to make your vote count? Make sure to follow the directions on your ballot carefully, sign the envelope, be consistent with your past signatures, and mail it in time.

Which party could benefit politically from postal service deficiencies? For now, that is still unclear. Young people who typically vote liberal are at a higher risk for their ballots being invalidated due to a changed signature, whereas seniors who lean conservative might opt out of voting in-person due to COVID-19 and also not cast mail-in ballots due to Trump’s attacks on the postal service. Historically, there has not been a significant difference between votes cast in-person versus by mail by Democrats and Republicans, so it is a gamble for Trump to go on the offensive against the postal service. 

Trump’s claims of increased voter fraud through mail-in ballots are baseless: research has shown that the risk of fraud is minimal and that mail-in voting could even increase participation. A possible motive for Trump’s attacks on the postal service could be to preemptively justify challenging the results of the elections in the event of his defeat.

While there might be a disaster on the horizon, that doesn’t change the truth integral to our democracy: we must vote. Even if it looks different this year, if we don’t have faith in our elections then we lose the essence of our democracy. Yes, the outcome will likely be slower this year. Yes, there will likely be some logistical errors along the way. But if we let that get in the way of us actually casting our ballots then that means we have given up on America.

Vote, vote, vote. And please occasionally go outside (with a mask) and get some sunshine too. I know we all need it.