Democrats' Misplaced
Faith in Mail Voting
The Democrats are beating the
drum to expand mail-in voting. They assume voting by mail will increase
turnout.
The results of the July 7,
2020, New Jersey Primary election should give them pause.
Allegedly in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, instead of opening most polling
places, mail-in ballots were sent to every registered Republican and Democrat
in New Jersey. Unaffiliated voters received forms for requesting a mail-in
ballot.
I say allegedly because since Phil Murphy became Governor,
he and the legislature have passed clearly illegal legislation sending mail-in
ballots to voters who did not request them. They passed bills that were
retroactive, saying that anyone who asked for an absentee ballot in 2016, a high
turnout presidential race,would automatically receive
one in 2018. This legislation was a thinly disguised attempt to try and
increase turnout in the 2018 off-year election. Voter turnout did increase in
2018, not only in New Jersey, but in the whole country, to the highest off-year
totals in decades.
The Democratic Governor and legislature repeated
the plan by sending mail ballots for the 2019 off-year state-legislature-only
elections to everyone who requested one in 2016. Again, the turnout did
increase to 26.77%, the second-lowest general election turnout in New Jersey
since 1925, up from 21.65%, the lowest, four years earlier. While the Democrats
scream about voter suppression with closed polling places and stringent voter
ID laws, someone ought to explain how New Jersey manages to keep three out of
every four voters home for legislative elections. (Hint: by defrauding voters
of special elections to fill vacancies in the legislature and letting political
party committees fill them by appointment instead.)
Voters were infuriated who
received vote-by-mail ballots that they did not request. Under New Jersey law,
a voter who receives a vote-by-mail ballot is not allowed to cast a ballot in a
voting machine. People who had automatically been sent absentee ballots went
their polling place location only to discover that they either had to return
home to find the unrequested ballot, and put it in the mail, or fill out a
provisional ballot at the polling place. Voting with a provisional ballot is an
arduous process, identical to re-registering to vote.
So, when the pandemic hit, Governor Murphy seized on the
social distancing requirements to force everyone except the visually impaired
to vote on paper ballots. To ensure that visually impaired people can cast a
secret ballot, at least one voting machine had to be available in each town.
There are special audio-enabled voting machines that walk people who can't see
through the ballot, allowing them to cast a vote with a keypad. Without these
special machines, visually impaired people would have to depend on someone else
to cast their ballots for them. In the past, without the machine, visually
impaired people needed to either find a trusted individual to assist them or
two election workers, one from each party, entered the booth and executed the
proper vote.
By the time New Jersey holds
its primary, the presidential nominees for the major parties have already been
decided, so it is legitimate to compare different primary elections. The
results of mailing ballots to everyone do not support the idea that mail-in
voting increases turnout.
In 2016,
primary turnout was 1,388,669 out of 5,356,205 registered voters, or 25.92%.
In
2020, primary turnout was 1,466,366 out of 6,194,661 registered voters, or
23.67%, a decrease of 2.25% of the voters. Rejected ballots in 2020 were 2.7%.
So, the turnout in 2016 and 2020 were almost identical. Sending ballots
automatically to every voter did not increase the turnout. So, people who think merely sending ballots
to people will get them to vote are whistling in the dark. Voters still need to
be persuaded to vote for a candidate, so the Democrats would do better to
figure out how to get voters to support Biden than to waste their time and resources
on fighting for vote-by-mail ballots.
More disheartening for
advocates of mail-in voting was the rise in rejected ballots. In a normal
election, 0.8% of ballots are rejected for various reasons: no postmark,
arriving after the deadline, missing signatures, or other identifying
information on the affidavit that must be included.
In the July primary, the
rejection rate was 2.7%, more than eight times the rate four years earlier when
only people who requested mail-in ballots received them. The high error rate
proves that voting in machines is safer than paper for casting a ballot.
About
2% of the electorate is first-time voters in every federal election. When
people vote in polling places, there are election inspectors to answer
questions and tell the voters what they need to do to cast a ballot that will
count. Vote-by-mail is a do-it-yourself operation open to error.
Furthermore, people under 30
years old are resistant to using the postal service. They were raised on email
and the internet. A young man asked, "Where do I vote?" I said,
"It's printed in the red box next to your name and address on the front of
your sample ballot." He replied, "Oh, those. I always throw them
out." The people who were sent ballots they did not request may have
discarded them, too, thinking they were junk mail.
The good news is that an examination of the 2020 returns
in Monmouth County, New Jersey, where I live, shows that Republican and
Democrat vote-by-mail ballots were rejected at exactly the same rate. So,
neither party seems to be advantaged by the use of mail ballots.
So, in spite of clear proof
that voting by mail does not necessarily increase turnout, and given the
obvious pitfalls of depending on the post office to postmark and deliver
ballots on time, the Democrats continue to try to force people to vote on paper
ballots, the most insecure form of voting. What could go wrong?
[NOTE: In the interest of full disclosure, and
given the current climate of suspicion of political sabotage, I am a supporter
of Joe Biden. Originally, I was for Bernie Sanders. I have donated a small
amount of money to Biden and bought a sign for a third party.]
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