I went to the polls last week to cast my vote.
I don’t believe in mail in voting unless you are literally unable to get to the physical polling location.
I know many of you LOVE mail in voting, but here are my reasons against it. That being said, I’m not going to argue any of this with you all. This is my opinion and why- but I don’t care what you do as long as you vote.
- My daughter is a college student in DC, but she wanted to vote for her official place of residence- NYC. She applied for an absentee ballot but never received it. She was unable to get a new one. This means she did not get a chance to vote, and someone else could have gotten her ballot and cast a vote. There is no way to guarantee delivery of ballot, nor authenticity of vote
- If a polling place is able to count your ballot and show proof of that, there is probably some code in there that will show how you voted. Is there such a thing as a secret ballot anymore?
- Mail in voting would need to be updated on a yearly basis, because you can’t be mailing ballots to people who may have died or who may have moved, because ANYONE CAN FILL OUT THOSE BALLOTS AND NO ONE WOULD KNOW Administratively, this is a nightmare. Plus- the cost. For when there are midyear primaries and such, you would need to go through same procedure twice in a year.
- Do we want to rely on the mail to get something as important as our ballots to and fro? I live in an apartment building. I get someone else’s mail at least five times a week, including mail for the person who lived here prior- twenty five years ago.
- According to my 20 something neighbor- they just don’t check their mailboxes because they don’t ever expect to get anything other than packages. This includes my daughter and her friends, whether they are from NYC or other places, and wherever they live now. Knowing she had requested an absentee ballot made my daughter actually find out where her mailbox was/is. She will likely not visit it again this year. She directed relatives wanting to send her birthday cards to just send them to NYC and she will look at them at Thanksgiving.
- Say you didn’t receive your ballot and a vote was counted in your name: What’s the recourse?
- What if they never received your ballot: What’s the recourse?
New York City held an election last week. Every four years all citywide offices, including Mayor, are up for grabs (we also have term limits now, so that adds to the importance)
We had all sorts of early voting, mail in, etc…
This year less than 20% of eligible NYC voters actually voted- (gothamgazette.com)
If we make voting a month long free for all, I only see that number getting lower. I think when it is spread out it lacks the urgency and gravitas. I think it makes it easier to be apathetic.
Side Note: This blog was written on the 6th. When I spoke to my daughter on the 9th, she told me that the ballot got to her on the 8th- almost a week after election day
Waking up on the Wrong Side of 50 
This is why mis-count and corruption is more rampant than people realize. I couldn’t believe that until poor Al Gore’s experience with Florida, or the recent footage of the extremely-debated Trump/Biden counts.
No, I’m not on one political side saying the other should have one. Yes, I think it was alarmingly fishy. As evidence to some of your concern: a friend of mine (married and long moved out for twenty years) said her mother got a mail-in ballot for my friend last year AND her mother mailed it in with her mother’s voting choices…
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I hate to say I’m surprised but I’m not. 99.9% chance of corruption with mail in voting. It’s just not a good long term strategy
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I agree. I don’t support mail-in voting unless the voter cannot reasonably get to the physical voting place. It opens up too much opportunity for fraud.
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1 billion percent agree. The chance of fraud is 99.9%
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In Washington state we vote by mail. I agree with your point but maybe if we made voting more accessible to everyone we wouldn’t have this issue. Like maybe election day should be a national holiday so people don’t have to leave jobs or kids or the lines aren’t so long. Mail in voting makes it easier for the handicapped, elderly or rural voters. Instead, many states are making it harder to vote. This is a right many fought and died for. It should be honored.
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I’m ok with it being a national holiday. In New York it’s already a school holiday. And I’m ok with people who legitimately can’t get to the polls. But look at the situation with my daughter…who was literally denied her right to vote. How do we know that someone didn’t thwart her bologna because if the party she’s affiliated with? And personally I don’t think rural qualifies. Kids in rural communities still need to get to school. It’s not like we don’t know ahead of time when Election Day is. Rural shouldn’t be a handicap or an excuse for anything, if people don’t think that there’s a 99% chance of mail in voter corruption, I’ve got a nice bridge to sell them
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We have rural counties that only do mail-in voting, and it increased their participation. The distances to polling places are often long, and November weather is often bad. If it’s snowing or pouring rain, the country roads get really bad, meaning that people might not be able to get out at all. Having mail-in ballots means they can actually vote.
Mail-in ballots have allowed elderly people like my grandmother and my neighbors to continue voting, even though they have a hard time getting out of the house, or live a long way from town and can’t drive.
You have some valid points, but things aren’t the same everywhere. In very rural locations like Nebraska’s Sandhills, mail-in ballots have been a boon to the election process.
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I think it should be the exception not the norm. And I think there should be a more efficient process to this. Personally, I will never trust the validity of any election where more than 20% of votes being mail in.
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And that’s why the passage of the voters acts is so important. Those states that are limiting the number, the hours, etc. are making it so much harder for people to vote in person. I use mail in ballots and can track when it gets there but my signature is on the outside of the ballot so there is the whole identity theft thing as well.
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How much time do you think they spend matching signatures? Or what if, like me, between a bit of arthritis and carpal tunnel, your signature is no longer the same as when you first tegistered
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Los Angeles County was sued to remove 1.5 million people on the voter rolls who had moved or died. The court ordered them to purge those names. Then Gavin Newsom said never mind and for the first time in the state’s history, in 2020 they mailed ballots to everyone on the rolls. Prior to that you had to request an absentee ballot. I always vote in person on election day and I took my children with me to set an example.
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See…this is what I mean
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I totally agree with you and against you. I’m in CO, we have Mail-in ballots, drop-off ballots, and polling places. We also have voter registration (stop laughing) which means we can sign up to get notifications when the ballot is mailed to us, when it is cast (received into the voting system) and when it is processed (counted by the voting system). I personally would never rely on the USPS to deliver the ballot when it is being cast. I just use the drive-by ballot box drop-offs, which on election night are staffed by uniform police officers and volunteers. When I used to go to the polling place and cast a ballot, at best I could only hope the system actually registered it, I never knew if it did. The ballot tracking system (which is not the voting system) only tracks the paper ballot it does not track the vote. I was notified that my ballot was received and processed early Wednesday morning after the Tuesday election and I did not have to leave the comfort of my car to vote. CO also sends out detailed packets discussing the propositions on the ballot, including points for and against each proposition. I never been a more informed voter.
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I just don’t trust people to do the right thing
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That makes two of us
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Sigh, I switched to mail in voting because of the pandemic, I had zero problems till this most recent election, three weeks prior to the 2nd I was notified my ballot was received, on Nov 4th I received an email telling me my vote wasn’t counted because I didn’t double envelope it, which I find interesting because my wife and I filled out the forms at the same time and I know for a fact I double enveloped it, she’s a Democrat I am unaffiliated..really makes me wonder.
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I don’t trust mail in voting.
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I completely agree with you on all these counts. I will never trust blanket mail in ballots. I have less issue with absentee ballots because I believe they are better monitored. There is just so much opportunity for shenanigans with mail in ballots. 🙃
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Exactly. Absentee ballots are fine. They are monitored and need to be asked for. Anything else is a fraud
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I don’t like mail in voting either and agree with your reasons and rationale.
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👍it just doesn’t make sense to me on a wide scale basis
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We have such a mess right now, and it shouldn’t matter what your politics are, in a republic everyone should want every vote to count (once) without possibility of fraud.
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Completely agree
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I don’t mean to make a political statement, but I do think mail in voting is very risky. It’s become political because one side won (therefore thinks it’s great) and one side lost (and therefore thinks it’s corrupt), but all I know is how bad our own mail service is. We have to think of a better way.
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It’s not political at all (watch in two years when opposite sides react) it’s common sense and logic. My daughter did everything right and still didn’t get her ballot in time. And she’s one of those who need absentee ballot
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I agree it’s not actually political, what I meant was that right now, if you say you’re against mail in ballots, then people automatically assume you voted for Trump. You’re right, if they win the next election, then saying you’re against mail in voting will make people assume you voted for Biden.
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Exactly. What people don’t realize is that it’s not the best way to move forward with elections. While I see the reason for some to be able to mail in ballots…I think for it to be the norm is chaotic at best
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