FINAL WORD
While 2020 has been a brutal year in politics with ferocious partisanship driving both sides, Americans need to be prepared for the very real chance that the election will turn into a weeks-long battle that will stress-test the foundations of our political system. Mail-in ballots are the most likely reason for a delayed election-night result. Five states already hold all mail-in elections (Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, and Utah) but there are recent additions to that list because of COVID-19 fears. New Jersey and California, both with huge populations, have chosen to be vote-by-mail states this election cycle. There are also many more states that allow what’s called “absentee ballots” for specified circumstances, and some of them have added concerns over COVID-19 to their list of acceptable reasons. Democrats still cling to the belief that President Trump didn’t win the 2016 election fair and square, and are already spreading panic that Trump will refuse to step down if he loses. Politically, the fight so far has been over the distinction between mail-in ballots and absentee ballots, though both systems allow votes to be sent in via the mail. The difference, Republicans point out, is that universal mail-in voting in states would send out a live ballot to anyone who is listed as registered... despite often shockingly outdated voter-registration rolls.
The fear here is that through ballot-harvesting operations, huge numbers of unclaimed mail-in ballots could be collected, filled out, and dropped off at the polls without anyone identifying the fraud. Absentee ballots, the argument goes, are less prone to this abuse because an actual voter has to actively request one at their current registered address. It’s imperfect... but less open to manipulation. Irrespective of whether there’s intentional fraud or not, there’s a high probability that mail-in ballots (“vote by mail” and “absentee” together) will cause a mess in this election cycle. Millions of Americans are expected to vote through the mail this year than ever before. Much of the imminent mess will be attributed to political malice when it’s really incompetence. This was the cause of the mid-summer news cycle full of conspiracy theories that Trump was “defunding” the post office. Hysterical social media posts were shared widely on the Internet claiming Post Office boxes were being intentionally moved, and mail- sorting machines destroyed... all as part of a Trumpian scheme to disable the mail and prevent mail-in ballots from arriving. Even though that Post Office conspiracy furor has died down for now, there’s a very good chance that there will be all kinds of issues that arise from an unprecedented amount of voters entrusting their ballots to the mailman. Over a million mail-in votes are likely to be disqualified and discarded, according to an analysis in USA Today , for issues like missing signatures. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania rejected around 60,000 primary ballots already this year. These are key battleground states for the general election,
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October 2020
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