The 2020 presidential primary election was held during the spread of the covid-19 pandemic. security precautions required social distancing and continued disinfection of polling places. all of this made voting in person dangerous. long lines at polling places and general fears about the spread of the coronavirus prompted at least 16 states to postpone their primary elections or expand vote-by-mail systems.
voting by mail is also known as postal voting. it is often called absentee voting. is exactly what its name implies: a voting procedure in which ballots are mailed to voters to fill out, and voters mail them back. the United States. he first used mail-in voting during the American Civil War to allow union troops to vote while they were still away from home fighting the war. since then, it has become an electoral practice institution. five states currently hold elections entirely by mail.
It’s still a primary medium for us. military service members and Americans living abroad to vote during elections. Some people vote by mail to avoid lines at polling places on Election Day. Many people vote by mail to avoid losing time from work, especially low-income workers who can’t afford to take time off on Election Day.
States must verify that ballots are mailed in a timely manner. most states require that ballots be received by Election Day. but some states allow ballots to be received after Election Day if they are postmarked on or before Election Day. a postmark is a us stamp the postal service places in an envelope to officially indicate when the item was shipped.
Some states that expanded voting by mail did so by extending the deadlines for postmarked ballots. other states did so by mandating that every voter receive a ballot by mail. California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, issued an executive order in May 2020 mandating that all California registered voters obtain vote-by-mail ballots for the November 3, 2020 general election. The purpose was to encourage, but not demand, the vote by mail in the elections.
Who benefits from voting by mail?
President Donald Trump has publicly opposed states instituting expanded mail-in voting procedures. he has argued that mail-in ballots would be used to benefit the opposing Democratic party in the general election. in various tweets he has claimed, without evidence, that the general election would be “rigged” against him.
polls show that supporters of democrat party candidate joe biden prefer voting by mail to voting in person. An emerson university survey of those planning to vote by mail showed that 76 percent preferred joe biden compared to just 20 percent who preferred donald trump.
However, a Stanford University research team published a study in April 2020 showing that mail-in voting tends to affect turnout (how many voters show up) for both major parties equally. and voting by mail does not increase the share of total votes for either party. however, voting by mail tends to increase overall voter turnout.
voter fraud?
In a June 2020 speech to supporters in Phoenix, Arizona, Trump said, “Democrats are also trying to rig the election by sending out tens of millions of mail-in ballots, using the [coronavirus] . . . as an excuse to allow people not to go to the polls.” he said voting by mail would lead to voter fraud. Voter fraud is any use of falsified ballots in an election. he speculated, “where do these ballots go? who is receiving them? who is not receiving them? a small section that is Republican. Will they be stolen from mailboxes when put by the postman? Will they be taken from postmen and purses? will they be counterfeit? electoral fraud is extremely rare. After the 2016 presidential election, the largest voter fraud investigation took place in Tennessee. officials there counted 40 credible accusations of voter fraud out of 1.3 million votes. the number was so low that it would not have affected the outcome of the election.
Once in office, President Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to investigate voter fraud. he had claimed that millions of undocumented immigrants voted illegally. by January 2018, the commission had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and the president closed the commission.
ballot collection
While rare, voter fraud most often occurs with mail-in ballots. richard l. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California Irvine School of Law, says voter fraud occurs more often with mail-in voting than voting in person, “but it’s still rare.” One of the most notorious cases of vote-by-mail fraud in recent years involved “vote harvesting.” In 2018, a man working on the campaign of Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris in North Carolina paid several people to collect unstamped and incomplete mail-in ballots from voters. He also paid people to fill in the ballots with votes for Harris and forged signatures. He was caught and charged with violations of North Carolina election law.
A ‘shameless power grab’?
the republican party of california and the republican national committee (rnc) sued the state of california in may 2020 to stop the government. newsom’s vote-by-mail executive order. They called Newsom’s order a “blatant power grab” in which Newsom single-handedly attempted to rewrite election law. plaintiffs (people who bring a lawsuit against someone) allege constitutional violations.
the elections clause of article i of the u.s. The constitution says that state legislatures will determine the times, places, and manner of congressional elections. and the electors clause in article ii says that the state legislatures shall determine how the electors of the states are chosen in the electoral college. A month after Newsom issued his order, the California Legislature passed a law authorizing Newsom to cast vote-by-mail ballots. the Republicans’ demand became moot, or ceased to be relevant. (On November 2, 2020, the day before Election Day, a state trial court in a separate case decided that it would find that Governor Newsom overstepped his authority and should not do so again. The court’s decision it did not affect the California election itself.)
the state of nevada passed its own bill in august that would provide mail-in ballots for all active voters in the state. the state’s 300,000 identified inactive voters will not receive ballots by mail. the bill was passed strictly along partisan lines, highlighting the partisan nature of this conflict. Democrats supported it and Republicans opposed it. The Trump Campaign, the Nevada Republican Party and the RNC sued the Nevada Secretary of State, also a Republican, to stop her from issuing mail-in ballots before the November general election.
the basis of his claim against nevada law was different from that of california. Typically, Nevada election officials accept ballots that arrive up to three days after Election Day, even if the postmark is unclear. the new law leaves that provision in place. But the new law also requires election officials to count ballots received up to seven days after Election Day if they are postmarked by Election Day. Sixteen other states accept post-Election Day ballots that are postmarked by Election Day.
Federal law establishes that the “electors for president and vice president shall be appointed, in each state, on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November. . . . That is why the general elections are always on the first Tuesday of November. The plaintiffs argue that Nevada’s new law counting procedure will mean some ballots may be mailed after Election Day. in their complaint they say that the new law “effectively extends the election day established by Congress.” this could easily go to the usa uu. supreme court due to the urgency of the upcoming elections.
‘some absence is fine’
many see the president’s hostility toward voting by mail as evidence that he fears voting by mail will lose him the election. he proposed postponing the election until in-person voting can be done safely. Of course, only Congress has the power to set the date for Election Day, as federal law in Nevada shows. several congressional Republicans rejected his idea of delaying the election. A Republican senator said that Trump was only joking to provoke the media. Trump himself is not opposed to all mail-in voting. in May 2020, he tweeted, “some absent is fine, when needed. He is a legal resident of Florida and has praised Florida’s vote-by-mail system. in the florida primary he voted by mail. in August, he told reporters, “It’s actually a great thing, absentee ballots. I am going to vote absentee. ”
As partisan as Republican opposition to mail-in voting has been, some Republicans have expressed support for mail-in voting. U.S. Senate Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota criticized Trump’s many offhand complaints about mail-in voting. “mail-in voting has been used in many places for a long time,” thune told a reporter. “I think we want to assure people that it’s going to work. it’s safe and if they vote that way, it will count.”
writing & discussion
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what are the main arguments for and against voting by mail? What arguments do you find most persuasive?
Why do you think voting by mail has become such a partisan issue? How could the issue be presented in a less partisan way? use evidence from the article in your answer.
Imagine that you are a judge in the US. uu. supreme court in the case of president trump v. state of nevada. how would you decide the case? use evidence from the article in your answer.
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