# Universal mail-in ballots **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [January 13, 2022, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726 "2022-01-13T14:09:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2022, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/21 "2022-01-13T22:25:15Z")
It _is_ marginally easier to commit ballot fraud with mail-in ballots, but even then, retail voter fraud is quite difficult and rare and the payoff is very small. Sam\_Stone’s hysteria notwithstanding. There are enough conscientious voters out there who vote every election and make sure their ballots are received that any kind of large-scale attempt at intercepting ballots at any point would be detected very easily. The sorts of fraud you can get away with with mail in ballots (largely voting for someone in your own household who’s maybe not totally in possession of their faculties) are just as easy to get away with if you allow any mail in ballots at all, as those sorts of people are the ones with approved reasons to get mail in ballots as well. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2022, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/22 "2022-01-13T22:41:28Z")
> [@Aspenglow](#): > > Funny; we accept them here in Oregon every time. And we have very little voter fraud such as you describe. If Democrats win elections, that’s all the proof some Republicans need. ---
**Author:** ![KMS94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ad7895/32.png) [@KMS94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KMS94)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2022, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/23 "2022-01-13T22:41:42Z")
> [@Aspenglow](#): > > Third, local elections workers know who usually votes in elections. One election, more to do with state and town issues, I flat out forgot what day it was. I got a call at my house around suppertime from the town clerk. I hadn’t been in to vote yet, and she wanted to know if I was coming down to the town office. I vote every time. I apologized for forgetting, and said I’d be down. She then asked if I needed a ride. I told her I was all set and I’d see her in a minute… 😃 I love small town Maine. It’s best to vote in the morning, because there’s always a bake sale going too, and by evening all the good stuff is gone… 😢 ---
**Author:** ![anny\_m](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@anny\_m](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anny_m)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2022, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/24 "2022-01-13T23:02:20Z")
Illinois has mail-in voting by request and the usual “vote at the polls” system. If a voter has requested a mail-in ballot, that is noted on the poll log. If the ballot has been received by the Election Commission, the voter is not allowed to vote again. However, as is more common, the voter will state that they never mailed in the ballot. If they brought the ballot to the polling place, it is treated as a spoiled ballot, and the voter can then vote. If the voter says they forgot to mail it in or lost it or whatever, the voter can vote on a provisional basis. If the ballot is received in the mail by the deadline, the provisional ballot is not counted. If the mail-in ballot is not received, the provisional ballot will be counted. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/25 "2022-01-14T00:51:22Z")
You guys that have mail-in ballots exclusively, is there much opposition to it still, or much squawking from election losers? ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/26 "2022-01-14T01:03:22Z")
Not that I’m aware of here in Oregon. We’ve had VBM for more than 2 decades. Here’s a timeline of its evolution here: > **[A Brief History of Vote By Mail in Oregon](https://www.multco.us/elections/brief-history-vote-mail-oregon)** > > A Brief History of Vote By Mail in Oregon There’s a sov-cit movement in the state now about “Vote Fraud” and I see their signs, but up until Trump, it was a non-issue. And as usual, these disgruntled citizens don’t have any proof of their assertions. Just a lot of noise. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/27 "2022-01-14T01:37:18Z")
Where I live, ballots vary by precinct. How would a “universal” ballot even be feasible? (Or cost-effective)? ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/28 "2022-01-14T02:06:21Z")
I don’t think VBM should be turned over to national control. One of the greatest strengths of our electoral system is that it is handled by so many individual precincts within every individual county. I think there should be a national set of standards to which all counties would be held. Then each county would implement VBM in the way that would work best for them, adhering to those standards. I’m not sure what “cost effective” concerns one could have. It doesn’t cost much to mail out ballots. Most people I know return their completed ballots directly to the drop boxes around the county, saving the county the postage they would have spent for us to drop the ballots in the mail. Honestly, this isn’t rocket surgery. VBM has only become controversial since Trump decided to politicize it. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/29 "2022-01-14T02:16:23Z")
to @Son_of_a_Rich, Colorado has been VBM since 2013, and honestly there was zero bitching about it prior to 2016, when Trump started his complaint that if he didn’t win it would be because of cheating. Even so, it was blip on the horizon and quickly quieted down. The “big” Colorado vote issue came (predictably) in 2020, based around - > **[Colorado GOP joins Trump in raising specter of voter fraud](https://www.denverpost.com/2020/10/02/colorado-election-buck-griswold-mail-in-voting-fraud/)** > > Colorado’s Republican Party has joined President Donald Trump’s national effort to cast doubts on the integrity of the upcoming election. Which was only tangentially related to VBM. So, yeah, we get the same Trump world voter fraud allegations, but almost zero about it being specific to the VBM issue. Most allegations are more in line with the traditional “Democrats are fixing the voting totals” so it doesn’t matter what the ‘real’ votes are. And of course, the ever popular illegal aliens/dead are voting. Part of that is for, say 8ish years, Colorado as gone from deeply purple (overall at least) to ‘tends blue’, along the traditional urban/rural divides. So lots of blame for ‘darn Californians’ moving in and taking over in the big cities. with a 55 Biden / 42 Trump result, for a former battleground state, it wasn’t perceived as a close thing. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/30 "2022-01-14T03:52:30Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > There is enough ambiguity baked into mail-in voting that I don’t think any close election result will be accepted if it turns on the mail-in vote, whether or not a Republican or Democrat This has no connection to reality. Countless elections have been decided by a margin less than the mail in vote. It’s an extremely common occurrence. When someone tries to mess with mail-in ballots on a scale that would make a difference it necessarily involves a lot of people. [It gets noticed and they get caught.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCrae_Dowless) ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/31 "2022-01-14T04:23:40Z")
Sometimes they get caught messing with as little as one ballot. > **[Former GOP Chairman, Radio Host Sentenced For Voter Fraud And Forgery](https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/gop-chairman-forgery-voter-fraud/)** > > A former KLZ radio talk show host and one-time chairman of the Colorado GOP was sentenced Friday to probation following his conviction on charges of voter fraud and forgery.  ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/32 "2022-01-14T04:25:37Z")
> [@KMS94](#): > > One election, more to do with state and town issues, I flat out forgot what day it was. I got a call at my house around suppertime from the town clerk. I meant to say, this is a charming story. 🙂 It’s exactly what I mean about precinct workers knowing who their voters are. In the county in California where I worked as a paid elections official for many years, we didn’t go to this much trouble. But those who worked in each precinct knew to the gnat’s eyebrow what a routine election should look like. They would notice something amiss instantly. * * * This ridiculous notion that some random box of ballots would be just picked up by poll workers and counted willy-nilly only belies an incredible ignorance about how elections really work. I encourage everyone to volunteer to be an election worker at least once in their lives. It immediately puts to rest so many of the overheated claims made by those who shamelessly manipulate our ignorance for gain. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/33 "2022-01-14T04:30:02Z")
> [@D\_Anconia](#): > > Where I live, ballots vary by precinct. How would a “universal” ballot even be feasible? (Or cost-effective)? Universal vote by mail means every registered voter get a vote by mail ballot. Not the same ballot. ---
**Author:** ![DeadTreasSecretaries](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deadtreassecretaries/32/4817_2.png) [@DeadTreasSecretaries](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeadTreasSecretaries)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/34 "2022-01-14T04:40:13Z")
There was a [Massachusetts politician](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Stat_Smith) who got caught running a mail-in voter fraud scheme. I don’t know enough about the details to know if he essentially got caught because the scheme was unworkable or if he did something stupid. It’s always been kind of funny to me that conservative media never picked up on that. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/35 "2022-01-14T05:18:26Z")
I realize that. In my state alone, there must be thousands of variations on a ballot depending on where the voter lives. Who is going to create the standards for a “universal” ballot, and who will ensure compliance? ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/36 "2022-01-14T05:46:24Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > One _minor_ disadvantage of mail-in voting is you don’t get that civic, social experience of seeing and meeting others from your town at the grade school gym. Although not in it, I am only a quarter mile outside Andy Biggs’ district and I can’t imagine the demographic is much different. I’ll pass on the experience. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/37 "2022-01-14T07:20:55Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > One _minor_ disadvantage of mail-in voting is you don’t get that civic, social experience of seeing and meeting others from your town at the grade school gym. If you are a “last minute” voter, you do get to walk/run/drive down to the ballot drop-off box and see all the other procrastinators walking/running/driving to the ballot drop-off box as you all drop your ballots in before the deadline. You still see families walking up to the box with their children to impress the importance of voting. Last time, there was someone nearby handing out “I Voted!” stickers. The line is never 8 hours long - which some people feel is necessary for voting. For most of the rest of the “problems,” they don’t really exist. They do call if the signature on file doesn’t match the signature on the ballot. You can track whether or not your ballot has been received and counted. They track provisional ballots and check them against mail in ballots. The states that have been doing this for decades have worked through the problems. > [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > You guys that have mail-in ballots exclusively, is there much opposition to it still, or much squawking from election losers? Until this last year - no, not really. When it started, both parties were in favor of mail-in voting (better access, cheaper, saved money). And a lot of people already had been permanent-mail-in anyway. In 2020 - when nationwide Republicans started complaining about mail-in ballots, it did trickle down somewhat to somewhat - but it actually helps that the Secretary of State (who runs elections) is a Republican and she stayed consistently on message that voting-by-mail is safe and (almost entirely) non-fraudulent. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/38 "2022-01-14T08:46:56Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > One _minor_ disadvantage of mail-in voting is you don’t get that civic, social experience of seeing and meeting others from your town at the grade school gym. Where I am [Australia] voting takes place on a Saturday and election days are seen as an important exercise in civic responsibility. We go to church halls or school gyms, and there is always a cake stall and [sausage sizzle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_sausage). Don’t underestimate the importance of this sort of collective action in helping people to recognise and want to protect the right to vote. We look with sadness and pity at the way this has been gutted in the US, and the way it has played out in your last election. > [@Aspenglow](#): > > I don’t think VBM should be turned over to national control. One of the greatest strengths of our electoral system is that it is handled by so many individual precincts within every individual county. I would suggest that the experience of having an independent electoral commission that regularly reviews and adjusts electoral boundaries towards uniformity, and which runs election day and then does the count will fill you with unprecedented joy. It is simply a machine for guaranteeing that you can vote and transparently turning that vote into a political result. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/39 "2022-01-14T10:32:20Z")
I don’t think you get it. It’s not a universal ballot. It’s universal access to the ballot. ---
**Author:** ![DeadTreasSecretaries](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deadtreassecretaries/32/4817_2.png) [@DeadTreasSecretaries](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeadTreasSecretaries)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726/40 "2022-01-14T13:55:17Z")
> [@D\_Anconia](#): > > Who is going to create the standards for a “universal” ballot, and who will ensure compliance? What do you think happens when you go to vote in person? How would it work any different by mail? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/universal-mail-in-ballots/957726.md?page=3)