Convincing Your Friends and Relatives That Mail Voting is Safe and Secure
Convincing Your Friends and Relatives That Mail Voting is Safe and Secure
Election Integrity Series Pt. II
A major conservative group recently announced “plans to monitor ballot drop boxes for the November election and identify people it believes are voting illegally.” Last weekend, the former President asserted that Democrats were planning to mail in thousands of fake ballots from overseas.
These scare tactics make it easy to believe that America’s vote-by-mail system is vulnerable to fraud. If you only listen to the lie-mongers, it seems totally possible that someone could stuff handfuls of fake votes into drop boxes or send in fraudulent ballots on behalf of shadowy voters from foreign countries.
Not even close. As we saw when we kicked the tires on our country’s voter registration system, U.S. elections include robust checks and balances that ensure the security and integrity of absentee voting and voting by mail. The next time you hear a neighbor or relative say that someone is stealing the election through mail voting, try explaining these points:
First, hopefully it goes without saying, but a vote on a piece of paper isn’t a vote. Officials only tabulate official ballots. No one who’s stuffing drop boxes full of votes on pieces of paper is getting away with anything.
Second, each ballot has to be sealed inside an official envelope. To commit mail ballot fraud, someone has to steal huge stacks of ballots and envelopes without officials (who are required to keep a close inventory of their supplies) realizing the materials are missing.
Third, the outside of each official envelope includes information that identifies the voter who submitted it.1 This helps election officials confirm two essential facts: (1) that each ballot was submitted by an eligible, registered voter; and (2) that the voter actually requested a mail-in ballot.
That third point is worth focusing on: before officials count a mail-in ballot, they pause to ensure that ballot came from a registered voter who actually requested a mail-in ballot. This is an incredible check against fraud, because it’s almost impossible to (1) obtain a list of registered voters; (2) submit a large number of ballot requests on behalf of voters; (3) intercept all those ballots in the mail before they reach the real voters; and (4) fraudulently vote and return those ballots on the voters’ behalf, all without getting caught.
Even if a fraud succeeded that far, it would still get caught when everyone who had a mail ballot requested in their name tried to go vote. At that point, officials would inform them they’ve already voted by mail, which the voters would deny. If this discrepancy happened even a handful of times in a given county (let alone the “millions” of fraudulent votes Trump claims exist) it would be investigated, immediately uncovered, and swiftly corrected.
To many of us, the fact that mail voting isn’t fraudulent may seem so obvious that it’s not worth discussing. Millions of other proud, voting Americans have the exact opposite view: to them, it’s beyond dispute that mail voting is corrupt.
My hope is that rather than demonize or laugh off the other side, providing a few basic facts about the checks and balances built into our election system might help provide some common trust in the system as voting gets underway this week.
Ballots are separated from their envelopes before tabulating, which means by the time a vote is counted it’s still a “secret ballot” — it’s not possible to determine which candidates any specific voter selected.