Approximately 30 percent of U.S. voters cast their ballots by mail. In states like Oregon, which uses entirely mail-in balloting, it is called “Mail-In Voting.” The more standard term used in most of the 50 states is “Absentee Voting.”
Its most common and regular use was providing absentee ballots to men and women serving in American military service branches, and for decades those Absentee Military Ballots were predominantly Republican, with the exception of the American South.
The federal government has traditionally had very little role in the elections process, due to powers conveyed by the U.S. Constitution to the individual states. In the spring of 2020, the pandemic lockdown fell almost atop Georgia’s planned Presidential Preference Primary. That election was re-scheduled to take place atop the General Primary, and every Georgia voter was mailed an Absentee Ballot application. Nearly 70,000 volunteer and senior citizen poll workers resigned over fears of contracting COVID while working in a crowded polling place on Election Day.
Unrelated, but simultaneously, the State of Georgia was rolling out an entirely new electronic voting system, following an 18-month series of public hearings, demonstrations of several different voting platforms, and seeking input from dozens of local election officials.
The new system and related training cost well over $200 million to implement. Meanwhile, local election officials and the Secretary of State’s office trained nearly 100,000 new poll workers to replace those who retired or resigned.
As the fall elections approached, Georgia voter registration reached an all-time record and by Election Day, well over 5,000,000 ballots had been cast. And in that cycle, largely due to the pandemic, about 25 percent of all ballots were cast by mail.
Though both President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump routinely cast mail-in ballots for Florida elections, the president maintains an inherent mistrust of them, and repeatedly rants about Democrats stealing elections via mail-in ballots.
Since his return to the White House, Trump has made innumerable attempts to flip the script and change the balloting process in all 50 states, in ways designed more to guide an outcome versus improve election security and ballot integrity.
Recently by Executive Order, the president ordered the U.S. Postal Service to secure voter roll lists from all 50 states, despite already being public records in most states.
Further, the president’s E.O. requires all 50 states to use a common scannable exterior envelope for sending out absentee ballots, as well as their ballot return envelopes.
With the general election now less than 60 days away, there has not even been a common envelope design circulated. Regardless, North Carolina was among the first states last week to mail out absentee ballots.
Multiple court challenges to Trump’s E.O. resulted in a federal judge halting implementation of the new rules, largely based on the compressed time frame and the likely confusion to follow, as well as potential disenfranchisement of millions of American voters. The Trump Administration then appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which already had recessed this summer and was not scheduled to resume hearing oral arguments until the first Monday in October – less than one month before Election Day.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and a bi-partisan coalition of 38 current and former elections officials from 10 states also appealed to the Supreme Court to uphold the ban on implementing the new USPS ballot handling rules.
In a decisive 7-2 vote by the Supremes on Sept. 14, the implementation ban was upheld. Admittedly, the justices did not speak to the intent of the new rules or their legality, ruling only on the poor timing and inability to implement new rules so close to an Election Day.
So, thank you again Mr. Secretary for standing up for all of us, and thanks also to our U.S. Supreme Court. I remain reasonably certain that unless the president’s preferred outcome arrives we can expect a whole new round of accusations of “Stop the Steal,” but it’s still good to know the ranks of the unbeaten and unbowed are again growing.
I would still recommend, though, as Trump is likely to make at least one more run at restricting absentee ballots for this critical election, that you vote early and in person, or on Election Day if at all possible. And if a mail-in ballot is your only option, use the drop boxes, at least one week prior to Election Day.