135
votes
Why did postal voting favour Joe Biden so much?
The Democrats strongly supported voting by mail due to Covid-19, to avoid risk of infection, while Trump downplayed the pandemic.
ScienceDaily: COVID-19 opens a partisan gap on voting by mail
This is ...
- 1,507
127
votes
Why did postal voting favour Joe Biden so much?
Donald Trump spent months making statements, to the media and on Twitter, along the lines of:
Mail-in ballots are very dangerous. There’s tremendous fraud involved and tremendous illegality. (source)
...
- 2,601
100
votes
Accepted
Why was the mail-in ballot rejection rate (seemingly) 100% according to ABC News in two counties in Texas in 2016?
This looks to be a data entry error either by the Election Administration and Voting Survey administrators, or by the county-level respondents to the EAVS, followed by ABC reporting the erroneous data ...
CDJB♦
- 109k
88
votes
Why is the USPS not privately operated?
Not being run by the government will not make the postal service "consistently profitable". In itself it will change nothing. What could make it profitable is to make some kind of sacrifice: ...
- 958
64
votes
Why did postal voting favour Joe Biden so much?
I think the other answers are correct in that both of these are factors:
Trump and some of the Republican leadership (repeatedly) slamming postal voting
Republicans being less afraid of Covid-19 and ...
60
votes
Why don't all States switch to all postal voting?
This answer is tainted by my German experience and views, but I expect many instances of it to apply to the US, too.
With the traditional concept of an election day, all people have the opportunity ...
- 13.2k
42
votes
Why don't all States switch to all postal voting?
While the other answers address legitimate, valid reasoning why voting-by-mail has some hurdles to overcome before it can become a national policy, this decision is ultimately made by legislators, and ...
- 17.3k
41
votes
Accepted
Preprinting 19☐☐ year on UK postal vote envelopes
Yes, different envelopes are printed. This came up during the 2019 general election, with some social media posts claiming that this was a deliberate decision to suppress young voter turnout.
The fact-...
CDJB♦
- 109k
40
votes
Why did postal voting favour Joe Biden so much?
The Trump campaign did a lot to demonize mail in voting with accusations that there was a lot of fraud with it. This along with the downplaying of covid among his supporters likely led to a lower mail ...
- 18.4k
38
votes
Would mail-in voting disproportionately help Republicans?
According to a June 2020 investigation published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the imposition of a universal vote-by-mail policy, whereby every voter would be sent a ballot ...
CDJB♦
- 109k
35
votes
Accepted
Obscure vote by mail clause in FL law
This is a clarification of a regulation that may have been misunderstood in the past.
If the signature matches that held on file then the vote can be counted, whether the signature crosses the seal ...
- 124k
33
votes
Why is the USPS not privately operated?
There are several reasons why the post office isn't privatized. For starters, in the U.S. the Post office is an enumerated power of congress, they essentially have full control over locations, allowed ...
- 14k
32
votes
Is there a higher incidence of electoral fraud in states that use all-mail voting?
I'd like to predicate this by saying that it is, by definition, impossible to have completely accurate statistics on incidents of something like voter fraud, since voter fraud done "well" is ...
- 2,135
24
votes
Accepted
What is a common failure rate in postal voting?
In the U.S., the rate at which mail in ballots were invalidated in 2020 was about 1.0% and it was about 1.4% in 2016 and 2018.
This is a somewhat tricky comparison, however, because the U.S. involves ...
- 88.3k
23
votes
Would mail-in voting disproportionately help Republicans?
No, the available evidence suggests that neither party would benefit overall.
From FiveThirtyEight:
Bottom line: By making it a little easier to vote, voting by mail probably increases the likelihood ...
- 19.2k
23
votes
Why don't all States switch to all postal voting?
@Jan's answer is a good one, though I would be a bit more a fundamentalist about it. A postal vote is not a secret ballot and (inter alia) contravenes the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the ...
- 1,354
21
votes
Why did postal voting favour Joe Biden so much?
Persons who voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump tend to be younger, paid less, and more in favor of masks/less likely of voting in person during a pandemic.
Younger people tend to have less schedule ...
- 969
21
votes
Why is the USPS not privately operated?
There are several reasons why the post office isn't profitable and they are all out of the control of the post office itself. It should also be noted that the post office is self funding.
Honestly ...
- 18.4k
20
votes
Accepted
Why don't all States switch to all postal voting?
As a resident of Washington state, I’m a big fan of mail-in ballots. I know that you didn’t ask for upsides, but the fact that you can take the time to sit down to research and consider the issues and ...
- 26k
18
votes
Accepted
What fact-based arguments exist that mail-in voting would lead to significantly higher instances of US voter fraud?
The simple answer is that there are no facts to support the idea that mail-in-voting would lead to higher instances of fraud.
On the contrary, states that have experimented with mail-in-voting have ...
- 10.5k
18
votes
Accepted
Why were the US mail-in ballots implemented the way they were, with such a late mailing deadline?
It's pretty simple, actually: Election day is "the Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November", and people have the right to cast their votes up to the closing of polls on ...
- 26k
18
votes
Can I Vote Via Absentee Ballot in the 2022 Georgia Run-Off Election?
Just to add to Rick Smith's answer; no - due to the recent passage of the Election Integrity Act 2021, which reduced the time between a general election and a runoff election from nine weeks to four (...
CDJB♦
- 109k
17
votes
Accepted
Are there any official statistics on average rejected/missing/lost ballots by mail?
Yes, the Election Administration and Voting Survey - conducted biennially since 2004 by the Election Assistance Commission - collects this data.
The 2016 report can be found here. In particular:
...
CDJB♦
- 109k
17
votes
Accepted
Does a mail-in ballot stay valid if the voter died between mailing it validly and the election date?
Does a mail-in ballot stay valid if the voter died between mailing it validly and the election date?
For some states, yes. For others, no.
What If an Absentee Voter Dies Before Election Day?, October ...
- 36.6k
16
votes
Accepted
Why is the USPS not privately operated?
There have been certainly been proposals in the U.S. to privatize the postal service, mainly from the "small government"/libertarian-leaning faction of the Republican party. (The Democratic ...
- 1,320
15
votes
Questions about mail-in ballot
Basically, if you vote illegally, and you are caught, you can be prosecuted criminally for doing so. This would usually be a felony. The more often you commit the crime, the more likely you are to be ...
- 88.3k
13
votes
Accepted
During a US election, are mailed-in votes counted first, second or there is no order?
That depends on the laws in each state. In some states mail in ballots can be counted as they come in but in others they can't be counted until the polls close.
I have included a couple of states for ...
- 18.4k
12
votes
Why are Democrats more likely to vote by mail than Republicans?
I tracked down the following explanation in a Washington Post article:
Why do so many more Democrats than Republicans plan to vote by mail?
One clear explanation of the growing gap has been well ...
11
votes
What fact-based arguments exist that mail-in voting would lead to significantly higher instances of US voter fraud?
I think it depends on your definition. Its trivial to see that mail in ballots make it easier to do vote selling or vote coercion. The party doing the buying or coercion can watch you vote and watch ...
- 1,496
11
votes
Why do some states forbid pre-counting mail ballots?
This is usually to avoid the leaking of any partial vote tallies before the election, which might have the effect of unfairly encouraging or discouraging turnout of voters favoring one candidate or ...
- 4,541
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible