Voting Outside the Polling Place: Absentee, All-Mail and other Voting at Home Options

As lawmakers consider policies that allow more people to “vote at home,” or vote by mail, or vote absentee, they will weigh the pros and cons.

advantages

• voter comfort and satisfaction. citizens can review their ballots at home and take as much time as they need to study the issues. voters often express enthusiasm for this option. for example, this pew research center poll shows that 65% of voters support no-excuse absentee voting.
• financial savings. jurisdictions can save money because more absentee/mail-in voting can reduce the need to staff and equip traditional polling places. A 2016 Colorado study by Pew Charitable Trusts found that costs decreased by an average of 40% in five election management categories in 46 of 64 Colorado counties (those with available cost data) after it implemented California elections. mail-in ballots. (Note: The study examines several reforms Colorado enacted in 2013, with mail-in elections being the most significant. Other changes included instituting same-day registration and shortening the length of residence in the state for voting purposes.)
• participation. some reports indicate that due to convenience, voter turnout increases. Check out this 2013 report on mail ballot elections in washington and this 2018 report on mail ballot elections in utah. turnout effects may be more pronounced in elections with lower turnout, such as local elections, and among low-propensity voters (those who are registered but do not vote regularly). the evidence for higher turnout based on absentee/mail-in voting, rather than mail-in elections, is less clear.

disadvantages

• financial considerations. mailing ballots increases printing costs for an election. There may also be up-front costs for a jurisdiction to transition from mostly in-person voting to more absentee/mail-in voting, although fewer voting machines are generally required in jurisdictions that have more absentee/mail-in voting and count ballots in a centralized location. if a state chooses to pay for the return postage of these ballots, that could also increase costs.
• an increase in “errors” or “residual votes” by voters. by marking a ballot outside of an in-person polling place, a voter can potentially mark more selections in a contest than the maximum number allowed (called an overvote) or mark less than the maximum number allowed, including marking nothing for one or more contests ( called downvote). political scientists often refer to these excessive and negative votes as errors or residual votes. the voting team at the in-person polling places will notify voters if this happens and give them an opportunity to correct it. when returning an absentee/mail-in ballot, there is no similar mechanism to inform voters of errors on the ballot itself, so there tends to be more overvoting and less voting. damaged absentee/mail-in ballots can also be more difficult to correct. procedural options can mitigate this effect to some extent.
• tradition. the civic experience of voting with neighbors at a school, church, or other local polling place is lost when voting by absentee/mail-in ballot. some, however, point out that the experience of voting absentee or by mail can be shared with family members at home in a way that voting in person cannot.
• disparate effect on some populations. mail delivery is not uniform across the country. Native Americans on reservations, in particular, may have difficulty with mail-in elections because many do not have mailing addresses and their p.o. boxes can be shared. low-income citizens move more often and keeping addresses up to date can be a problem. literacy can also be an issue for some voters, as election materials are often written at the college level. (Literacy can also be an issue for voters at traditional polling places.)
• the potential for coercion. if a voter is marking a ballot at home, and not in the presence of election officials, there may be more opportunities for coercion by family members or others.
• slower results reporting. ballots can continue to arrive up to and after Election Day (depending on state law), so it may be days (or longer) after the election before election officials can count all the ballots. while results are generally not official until a week or two after the election, the lengthy count can delay unofficial results, including knowing who won or lost. During this time, all states are also examining provisional ballots and ballots from military or overseas voters. allowing ballot processing before Election Day can mitigate this effect.