Postal voting in the United States

Postal voting in the United States, domestically referred to as vote-by-mail, mail-in voting, or Vote from Home,[1] is a form of absentee ballot in the United States, in which a ballot is mailed to the home of a registered voter, the voter fills it out and returns it via postal mail or drops off the ballot in-person into a secure drop box or at a voting center. This process reduces the requirements to staff and run polling centers during an election and can result in considerable cost savings to the state.[2] Balloting materials may be sent via the United States Postal Service without prepayment of postage.[3] Vote-by-mail has been implemented in both Republican and Democratic states.[4]

Early voting in US states, 2020

Research shows that the availability of postal voting increases turnout.[5][6][7] Postal voting has a greater risk of fraud than in-person voting though there are relatively few known instances of such fraud.[8] Per one database, there were 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud from 2000 to 2012; a period in which billions of votes were cast.[9] Processing large numbers of ballots and signature verifications accurately has numerous challenges other than fraud.[10][11][12][13]

Process
A vote-by-mail ballot is returned to a ballot drop box.

Ballots or applications for postal ballots are sent out before the election date, by a margin which depends on state law. In some states, a voter's pamphlet is also distributed. The election office prints a unique barcode on the return envelope provided for each ballot, so processing of each envelope can be tracked, sometimes publicly,[14] and corresponding signature files can be loaded quickly to check the voter's signature on the envelope when it returns.[15][16][17][18] Voters who lose the return envelope can still vote by obtaining another envelope from election officials,[19] or in some jurisdictions by using a plain envelope.[20]

To vote by mail, an individual marks the ballot for their choice of the candidates (or writes in their name), places it in the provided mailing envelope, seals it and signs and dates the back of the mailing envelope. Some jurisdictions use one envelope or privacy sleeve inside an outer envelope, for privacy. The envelope containing the ballot is then either mailed, or dropped off at a local ballot collection center.

The deadline is determined by state law.[21] In some jurisdictions, postmarks do not count, and ballots must be received by a certain time on election day. In other jurisdictions, a ballot must have a postmark on or before the day of the election and be received prior to the date of certification. Many vote-by-mail jurisdictions enlist the help of volunteers to take ballots in walk-up Drop off Booths or drive-up Quick Drop locations. The Help America Vote Act requires some polling options, often at central election headquarters, with voting machines designed for disabled people.

In the 2016 US Presidential election, approximately 33 million ballots were cast via mailed out ballots (about a quarter of all ballots cast).[22] That resulted from a combination of the jurisdictions that used only vote-by-mail plus absentee votes in other jurisdictions.

In April 2020, during lockdowns for the coronavirus pandemic, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 58 percent of American voters would favor nationwide election reform to allow everyone to vote by mail.[23]

In states
See also: Vote-by-mail in Oregon
An Oregon mail-in ballot for a special election in May 2005

As of 2020, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington State conduct their elections entirely by mail. California will mail every voter a ballot before the November 2020 election; California voters will also keep the option to vote in-person.[24][25] Florida is considering postal voting for the November 2020 election.[26]

In 1998, voters in Oregon passed an initiative requiring that all elections be conducted by mail. Voters may also drop their ballots off at a county designated official drop site. Oregon has since reduced the cost of elections, and the time available to tally votes has increased. Oregon requires receipt of votes by 8:00 pm local time on election day. County elections offices collect from post offices at their closing time on election day and from drop boxes at 8:00 pm election day. Any valid ballot received by 8:00 pm local time on election day by any county is required to be counted, unless the cumulative votes of any valid ballots transferred to the relevant county elections office after the closing of the polls cannot change the outcome of the election for any given seat. Voter turnout is among the highest in Oregon.[27]

In 2011, the Washington legislature passed a law requiring all counties to conduct vote-by-mail elections.[28] Local governments in Washington had the option to do so since 1987, and statewide elections had permitted it since 1993.[29] By 2009, 38 of the state's 39 counties (all except Pierce County) had conducted all elections by mail.[30] Pierce County joined the rest of the state in all-mail balloting by 2014.[31] In Washington, ballots must be postmarked by election day, which helps to ensure all voters' votes are counted; ballot counting takes several days after election day to receive and process ballots.[30] Beginning in 2018 postage is prepaid so voters do not have to use a stamp.[32]

In 2013, Colorado began holding all elections by mail.[33] A Pantheon Analytics study of the 2014 election showed a significant uptick in voter participation from what would have normally been "low propensity" voters.[34] A PEW Charitable Trust study of the same election showed significant cost savings.[2]

In 2014, Utah started allowing each county to make their own decision regarding whether to go to all mailed-out ballots. In the 2016 general election, 21 of 29 counties did so. That rose to 27 of 29 counties in 2018, covering over 98% of their electorate, with all counties doing so in 2020.[35][36] A Pantheon Analytics study of Utah's 2016 general election showed a 5-7% point higher turnout in the counties using vote by mail than those with traditional polling places, with even higher differences (~10% points) among younger voters.

In 2016, California passed SB 450 which authorizes a roll-out of vote by mail across the state, at county discretion.[37] For the 2018 elections, 14 counties were authorized to vote by mail and five ultimately did so: Madera, Napa, Nevada, Sacramento, and San Mateo. In each of those five counties, voter turnout was higher than the average turnout for the state.[38] For 2020, all counties will be authorized to do so, and as of 8 April 2020 the following ten additional counties have opted in: Amador, Butte, Calaveras, El Dorado, Fresno, Los Angeles, Mariposa, Orange, Santa Clara, and Tuolumne.[39]

As of June 2020, four more states have since added no excuse voting by mail: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Other states have relaxed restrictions on mail in ballots for a total of 46 states to allow voting by mail due to Coronavirus-19.[40]

Kansas conducted its Democratic primary in May 2020 entirely by mail.[41] Hawaii used full vote by mail for all elections beginning with its primary in May 2020.[42] New Jersey will also conduct a primarily vote by mail election for the upcoming primary in July 2020 albiet a limited number of polling stations will be open for those who would vote provisionally as well as voters with disabilities.[43]

Other jurisdictions are now starting to experiment with vote by mail, or run pilot programs. 31 of 53 counties in North Dakota now vote by mail,[44] as do over 1000 precincts in Minnesota (those with fewer than 400 registered voters). In 2018, pilot programs in Anchorage, Alaska exceeded previous turnout records[45] and Garden County, Nebraska saw higher turnout versus the state average.[46] Rockville, Maryland piloted vote-by-mail in 2019.[47] In 2018, Connecticut's Governor issued Executive Order 64, directing a study of a possible move to vote by mail.[48]

Turnout

Insofar as postal voting makes the act of voting easier, it may facilitate a campaign's "get out the vote" efforts. Campaigns can also target potential voters more efficiently by skipping those whose ballots have already been processed by the elections office. On the other hand, face-to-face canvassing has been found to be less effective with postal voting.[49]

In 2016, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report outlining turnout improvements seen in vote by mail elections.[50]

Researchers in 2020 confirm that studies have shown increased turnout "mainly for those who already vote." In Colorado they found overall turnout rose 9 percentage points, while it rose 16 percentage points among young people, 13 among African-Americans, 11 among Asian-Americans, 10 among Latinos, blue-collar workers, those without a high school diploma, and those with less than $10,000 of wealth.[51]

Reliability of postal ballots
Total votes and mailed votes, by state US 2016

Expansion in 2020

The Election Advisory Commission and National Conference of State Legislatures have published information on the staffing, equipment, space and procedures needed to handle large increases in postal ballots.[52][53]

The National Vote at Home Institute, which advocates postal ballots, analyzed all states in 2020[54] and found that 32 states "are missing major pieces of policy or best practices that ensure a secure mail ballot process such as a sufficient data integrity process, signature verification processes and/or a signature deficiency cure process."[55] Among these 32 states, 15 lack steps to verify voters' addresses before mailing them ballots, 17 states do not mandate a signature verification process, and 30 do not have adequate options to cure defects in voter signatures.[55] Often voters have no way to cure signature mis-matches.[56]

Past problems

Postal ballots have been the source of "most significant vote-counting disputes in recent decades" according to Edward Foley, director of the Election Law program at Ohio State University.[57] Among the thousands of elections from 2000-2012, there were 491 known cases of absentee ballot fraud,[58] [59] [8] and the Heritage Foundation lists additional cases since 2012.[60] From 2003-2018, at least 15 election results were thrown out based on absentee voting fraud.[61]

Richard Hasen, a professor at UC Irvine School of Law said "problems are extremely rare in the five states that rely primarily on vote-by-mail."[62] Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University does not have statistics on postal ballot fraud, but said "I do collect anecdotal reports... misconduct in the mail voting process is meaningfully more prevalent than misconduct in the process of voting in person... Misconduct still amounts to only a tiny fraction of the ballots cast by mail."[62] Lonna Atkeson, an expert in election administration, said about mail-in voting fraud, "It’s really hard to find... The fact is, we really don’t know how much fraud there is... There aren’t millions of fraudulent votes, but there are some."[62]

In 2018, a report from the US Senate Intelligence Committee of Russian meddling in the 2016 election pointed out that auditable paper ballots, by definition part of all vote by mail elections, were potentially safer than paperless voting systems,[63] which are still used in a few states. However only about half the states actually use paper ballots to conduct election audits.

Specific types of problems include:

  • Voter's request for postal ballot, in states which require one, is lost or not received or processed in time, so voter must vote in person or not vote (for example over 9,000 properly requested ballots were not sent in Wisconsin in 2020)[13]
  • Voter's request is altered or forged[64][65]
  • In states which mail ballots to registered voters without request, some voters have died or moved, and any ballots not returned by the post office can get into the wrong hands[66][67][68]
  • Election office sends voters the wrong instructions[69] or wrong ballot, when offices on the ballot differ by party or district.[70]
  • Voter does not receive mailed ballot, because it does not arrive at the address in time, or someone else takes it[13][71]
  • Voter misplaces ballot, so must vote with provisional ballot, and someone else may find and vote the original postal ballot, leading to rejection of the provisional ballot.[72][71]
  • Voter is pressured to vote a certain way by family, caregiver, or other, or provide the blank ballot to someone[73][74]
  • Voters may be paid to vote a certain way[75]
  • Someone collects many ballots and does not deliver the ones from neighborhoods likely to vote against the collector's candidates[76]
  • Someone collects many ballots, opens envelopes, and marks votes; if voter has already voted, fraudster can mark extra votes on same contests, to invalidate ballot[77]
  • Election office receives the ballot late (114,000 ballots in 2018)[78][79][80]
  • Voter's signature on envelope is missing (55,000 in 2018) or does not match signature on file (67,000), so valid ballots are rejected[78][10]
  • Forged signature on envelope is accepted as close enough to signature on file, so invalid ballots are accepted[10]
  • Signature rejection rates vary by race, county and state, ranging from none to 6% rejected[12][11]
  • Staff who open envelopes falsify or ignore ballots[81][82]
  • Compilation of votes omits postal ballots[83]

These problems with postal ballots can be categorized as (A) procedural issues, which may not have solutions; (B) collection of ballots by dishonest collectors, which is partly controlled in many states by limits on the number of ballots which one person can deliver, though collectors can still mail in the ballots they collect,[84] [76] and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals disallowed Arizona's limits based on discriminatory intent;[85] (C) signature verification, which has inherent errors and may have bias,[11][10] and (D) insider issues, which are partly addressed by enough staffing, quality control, and openness to observation by the public or candidates.

Some problems have inherently limited scope, such as family pressure and bribes, while others can affect several percent of the vote, such as signature verification.

Republican concerns in 2020

In 2020, President Donald Trump began to say that postal voting was highly vulnerable to fraud, stating postal ballots will be "substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed".[86] Republican politicians are divided on that issue, with some making similar claims about fraud, while others – including a considerable portion of Republican senators – have disavowed the president's concerns.[87][67][88] Experts disagree with the expectation of substantial fraud.[62]

Signature verification
Failure rates when experts verify signatures
Postal ballots, rejection rates by state, US, November 2016, except Georgia 2018

While many states accept in-person votes without needing identification, states require a signature match for mailed ballots. The first step after receiving mailed ballots is to compare the voter's signature on the outside of the envelope with one or more signatures on file in the election office. Smaller jurisdictions have temporary staff compare signatures. Larger jurisdictions use computers which scan envelopes, quickly decide if the signature matches well enough, and set aside non-matches in a separate bin. Temporary staff then double-check the rejections, and in some places check the accepted envelopes too.[10]

Handwriting experts agree "it is extremely difficult for anyone to be able to figure out if a signature or other very limited writing sample has been forged,"[89]

In the November 2016 general election, rejections ranged from none in Alabama and Puerto Rico, to 6% of ballots returned in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky and New York.[12] [90] Where reasons for rejection were known, in 2018, 114,000 ballots arrived late, 67,000 failed signature verification, 55,000 lacked voter signatures, and 11,000 lacked witness signatures in states which require them.[78]

Florida officials rejected 4% of postal ballots which claimed to come from voters aged 18-25. In Florida over age 65, rejections were only half a percent, while rejections were 2% for ballots claiming to come from non-white voters, worse than in 2012, and 0.7% from white voters.[11] Florida voters are not allowed to cure signature problems if these are discovered after election day.[56]

In computerized signature reviews, error rates of machine matching are not published. Algorithms "look for a certain number of points of similarity between the compared signatures… a wide range of algorithms and standards, each particular to that machine's manufacturer, are used to verify signatures. In addition, counties have discretion in managing the settings and implementing manufacturers' guidelines… there are no statewide standards for automatic signature verification… most counties do not have a publicly available, written explanation of the signature verification criteria and processes they use"[10] The National Vote at Home Institute reports that 17 states do not mandate a signature verification process.[55] The Election Assistance Commission says that machines should be set only to accept nearly perfect signature matches, and humans should doublecheck a sample, but they do not discuss acceptable error rates or sample sizes.[91]

Error rates in signature verification are higher for computers than for experts,[92] and researchers have measured experts' error rates. In an experiment, experts rejected 5% of true signatures and 71% of forgeries. They were doubtful about another 57% of true signatures and 27% of forgeries. If computer verification is adjusted to reflect what experts are sure about, it will wrongly reject 5% of true signatures and wrongly accept 29% of forgeries. If adjusted to reflect what experts have doubts about, it will set aside 62% of true signatures, and still wrongly accept 2% of forgeries. Experts make more mistakes on signatures with fewer "turning points and intersections," so voters with short names are at a disadvantage. Lay people made more mistakes and were doubtful less often, though the study does not report whether their mistakes were to accept more forgeries or reject more true signatures. Participants in this study had 10 true signatures to compare to, which is more than most postal ballot verifications have.[93] A more recent study for the US Department of Justice confirms the probabilistic nature of signature verification, though it does not provide numbers.[92]

In manual signature reviews, "election officials with little or no training in verifying a person's signature are tasked with doing just that… it's unlikely that only one or two samples will show the spectrum of a person's normal variations…"[89] In a California study, most counties, when they manually reviewed ballot signatures, had "a basic presumption in favor of counting each ballot… [Some] declare that just three or even one matching characteristic between the ballot signature and the comparison signature will be sufficient to find a match… "[10] The researchers recommended that the public needs easy access to see the signature on file before mailing in ballots, to further maximize matches.[10]

Florida rejection rates in 2016 varied by county, ranging from none to 4%, and up to 5% for ballots which claimed to come from blacks or hispanics in some counties. Two counties with large universities rejected 9% of 18-21-year-olds: Alachua and Orange, while Pinellas, which also has large universities, rejected 0.2% of this age range.[11] Georgia rejection rates were available for one county in 2018, Gwinnett, which rejected 20% of the 506 ballots which claimed to come from Asian or Pacific Islander voters, 14% of the 1,236 ballots for black voters, and 5% for white voters.[94] Bias in computer verification depends on the set of signatures used for training the computer, and bias in manual review depends on whether the temporary staff recognize names as non-white.

Many voter registrations, especially for younger voters, come from driver's license applications, where the signature was done on an electronic signature pad. People move their hands differently when signing on paper and on electronic pads. Further the pads used have low resolution, so distinctive elements of paper signatures on the ballot envelopes, are blurred or omitted in the electronic signatures used for comparison.[10] Signatures also have more variation, and therefore are harder to verify, when they come from people who rarely use Roman characters, such as some Asian-Americans.[10] Election officials find that a decline in cursive writing leads to young voters more often printing their names in signature blocks; a California official said she "cannot compare a printed name to a signature."[10] The Election Assistance Commission says signatures over 10 years old are another problem and recommends Hawaii's practice of inviting every voter to send a new signature.[91]

The Election Advisory Commission says the first human check of a signature rejected by machines will average 30 seconds, and a sample of decisions to accept should be checked. They recommend all rejections should be checked by bipartisan teams (6 feet apart[95]) who will average 3 minutes for the final decision to reject, which means 6 minutes of staff time, plus supervision time. The Commission also discusses the challenges of moving large numbers of envelopes without mixups from receipt, to machines, and various steps of verification, rejection, and voter notification to cure mismatches, as well as counting and logging the number of ballots at every step. They mention the extra security needed when voters send copies of identity documents to cure their signature rejection.[91]

The National Vote at Home Institute recommends state-wide or regional centers for signature verification to increase transparency. and reduce the insider risks of temporary local staff,[96] though The Election Advisory Commission notes that shared equipment may not be consistent with local chain of custody requirements, and that public bidding may take months.[95]

In 16 states, when election offices reject signatures, they notify the voters so they can mail another signature, which may be just as hard to check, or they can come to the office and vouch for the envelope, usually in less than a week; the other 36 states have no process to cure discrepancies.[56] Notification by US mail results in more cures than email or telephone notice.[10]

Rejected envelopes, with ballots still unseen in them, are stored in case of future challenges. Accepted envelopes are opened and separated from the envelopes in a way that no one sees the external name and the ballot choices. The Election Advisory Commission says machines can help, but this step requires the most space of any step, especially when workers have to be 6 feet apart.[95]

Other challenges

In the case of all-postal voting, or a high proportion of postal votes, there cannot be traditional "Election Night" news coverage in which the results are delivered within hours after polls close, as it takes several days to deliver and count ballots. As a result it may require several days beyond the mail-in deadline before results can be publicized.[97]

Postal voting depends on the viability of the postal service. As of early 2020, the U.S. Postal Service has "a negative net worth of $65 billion and an additional $140 billion in unfunded liabilities." This financial crisis has become more pressing amidst the coronavirus pandemic, as the $2 trillion economic stimulus package did not include money for the postal service. As a result, the postal service—despite its widespread use for delivering food and medicine—may have to close in June, before the November 2020 presidential election.[98]

Alternatives

An increasing number of states in the US now allow drive-thru voting. In the process voters leave their absentee ballots in a drop box at designated locations. Some locations allow drop-off voting 24/7.[99] A National Task Force on Voting by Mail, organized by the conservative Public Interest Legal Foundation,[100] says drop boxes need 24/7 video monitoring for security, and ballot collectors should not be allowed to drop off ballots from large numbers of voters.[68]

Many states provide voters with multiple ways to return their ballot: by mail, via in person secure drop boxes, and at voting centers where they can get questions answered, replacement ballots, etc.[101] Oregon now has 300 drop boxes across the state in the weeks leading up to each election, and more voters now cast their ballot in person than by return mail.[102] The term "vote at home" is starting to replace "vote by mail" for that reason.[103] California's roll-out of vote-by-mail is incorporating voting centers as a key part of their effort.[102] Anchorage's successful pilot included many drop boxes and some voting centers.[102]

See also

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