FROM THE MAILBOX TO THE BALLOT BOX
The Complex History of Voting by Mail
Voting has long been a right for American citizens, and it is an important way for people to effect change on a national level. This year’s COVID-19 pandemic may have stolen some of the spotlight from the election, but it has also ignited a debate about how we vote. During the pandemic, mail-in voting has become more popular, and NPR estimates that at least 70% of voters will cast their ballot by mail for the 2020 presidential election. However, the ability to do this differs by state. Nine states and Washington, D.C., mailed ballots to every eligible voter, while seven others have proclaimed that COVID-19 is not a valid excuse to warrant a mail-in or absentee ballot. Why are states so varied in their approaches to mail-in voting? To answer that, we have to go back in time. Mail-in voting began as a way to give Civil War soldiers who were stranded far away from home an opportunity to vote in the 1864 presidential election. From 1862 to 1865, 20 states passed laws that required absentee ballots for soldiers. Meanwhile, nine states fought these laws all the way to their state Supreme Courts, and four states struck down the laws and upheld in-person voting as the only way to cast a ballot. Experts at National Geographic report that this was done to protect the “purity” of the vote. However, since that time, every state in the Union has passed laws that allow mail-in voting of some kind, largely to increase
access to voting. Each state still has the leeway to determine voter eligibility, the rules of the process, and the legality of mail-in voting. Today, voting by mail is actually much more secure than it was in the mid-1800s. State laws were created to suppress voter fraud by requiring notary signatures and/or specialty ballot boxes. According to experts, those laws seem to be working. NPR reports that of the 250 million ballots that have been cast by mail nationwide in the past 20 years, only 143 have led to criminal convictions. Mail-in voting may never leave its controversial past behind, and its prevalence in future elections is yet to be determined. But from a legal standpoint, as long as you follow your state’s regulations, you don’t have to fear breaking any laws when you vote by mail.
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