Politics: Vote by Mail Thoughts

In what might be a more important issue of our time than it has ever been before, we have to think about the important ways that we can vote. We can even vote early if we want to and can in some places by voting by mail. This shouldn’t be a controversial or political issue, but it is. And there is a lot to say about it.

There is a belief that voting by mail, or absentee voting, will lead to fraud. How much of this is a valid concern and how much is overblown to discredit use of it and results from it is another thing that parties don’t seem to agree on. One might be more honest with this than another.

The guy in the White House is convinced that the use of mail in voting will lead to Democrats winning and Republicans losing. He doesn’t seem to think people should be able to do this. But he does vote by mail himself. And he’s okay with those in Florida voting by mail. It would seem that more Republicans vote by mail than Democrats in that state. Thus, why ban it there? But the threat of, um, people being able to vote, at least by ways that others don’t like, seems to be more of a hot button issue than it should be.

Of course, this leads to controversy with a misleading term known as ballot harvesting. This is how people feel that fraud happens when people simply make sure that ballots are collected by other people. This is how we know that votes have been counted and gathered. Again, some think that this is how the Democrats get fraudulent victories.

What’s interesting is that there is one instance that I know of where this was used for fraud. But it wasn’t a Democrat who was doing it. In a North Carolina race for House of Representatives, there was a Republican campaign who effectively stole votes and rigged that election as a result by making sure that votes weren’t counted at all. They refused to certify the election results and that district had no representative as a result due to the fraud. But this is worth noting because while so many Republicans are convinced that only Democrats use this for fraud, the only known cause of fraud that I’m sure happened was with a Republican campaign.

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746800630/north-carolina-gop-operative-faces-new-felony-charges-that-allege-ballot-fraud

Still, all the lies and rhetoric with voting by mail has lead some people to do what they can to get rid of that option, even if they might need it in the future. In Michigan, some Trump supporters made videos of burning their applications to vote by mail, thus losing a potential window of opportunity that they have to vote that they might not otherwise have.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/14/1953082/-Michigan-MAGAs-burn-their-own-absentee-ballot-applications-to-own-the-libs

There can be issues with this process, though. 2000’s presidential election remains notorious for how this process worked when it factored into a recount. There is evidence that ballots that black voters did were never counted or sent in. And yet, vote by mail is considered a way that only benefits that Democrats when it is well known that most black people vote for Democrats and are not having their votes counted in this real scenario.

A possible issue is that different states have different rules with how vote by mail works. There are 50 states and there very well might be 50 different rules as a result of how or even if one can vote by mail. Some states might require the information of two notaries. Some states don’t allow you to vote by mail without an excuse. It is hard to know what all the state’s rules are right now without looking them up or otherwise knowing offhand.

My state was nice enough to send me an application to vote by mail and I filled that out and turned it in. I have voted in every general election and primary since 2010 when I first became old enough to vote. I have always done that in person. Those days may not be over for sure, but I do plan to vote by mail this time. While I do worry some about the vote not being counted when it should, I also worry about that with voting in person as well. I mean, unless the entire country does paper ballots at the polls, there is no way or knowing for sure that what you did actually registered as the right thing and will show up that way or that the vote won’t be changed like it can electronically. I’d say that there is potential for fraud in many methods of voting at a polling place and that worrying about just one very valid method isn’t that big a problem or issue.

There’s not much else to say as I end this post. I think that voting by mail is perfectly fine and quite acceptable. It is hardly how just one side wins and the other side loses. It is hard to know how much valid concern there is with fraud through this method, but I’d argue that there isn’t enough concern that this is the only issue with fraud to be too concerned about it. All I know is that one cannot delay the election without changing the constitution unless one is able to make an amendment too it, which isn’t happening this time around. Voting by mail is a good option and worth doing in the end.