A surge of mail-in voting could sow chaos in this fall’s U.S. election, dividing the country and handing Donald Trump a pretext to cling to office if he loses.
Five states already use vote-by-mail by default; every registered voter gets a ballot in the mail
Now, even with the right paperwork, Straith is still worried. Not about fraud, or whether his ballot will arrive on time, or even whether his vote will count—Jefferson County, where he lives, is so deep-red, they haven’t elected a Democrat since the Civil War era. Instead, Straith believes this year’s election will further divide the nation.
Doomsayers point to this spring’s primary elections, tests that several states resoundingly failed. In Georgia, not only did glitchy voting machines leave people waiting in line for hours, but mail-in ballots were slow to reach many of the record 1.5 million residents who asked for them; they had no idea whether their votes got back in time to be counted.
Hasen specializes in election law, and understood the legal and political ramifications of a pandemic weeks before most governments even closed their borders. On Feb.
Republicans are correct that mail-in ballots are more susceptible to fraud than ballots cast in person. But the difference is negligible, and fraud rarely happens, as almost every state requires safeguards such as signature matching. Amber McReynolds, CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute, and Charles Stewart III, a professor at MIT, pored over a database of about 250 million mailed-in votes over the past 20 years, and found just over 1,200 cases of voter fraud.
A cynic might suspect some governments, especially those led by Republicans, want to suppress mail-in voting and sow doubt about the process in the belief that Democrats benefit when more people are able to vote. Straith, in Tennessee, believes his state obscured the mail-in online application “by design, because the people that control the website were also the same people who didn’t want this to happen.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Amy McGrath wins Kentucky Democratic primary; showdown with McConnell awaitsVoting ended June 23, but it took a week until McGrath could be declared the winner due to the race’s tight margins and a deluge of mail-in ballots
Read more »
A neighbour regrets a pandemic-era scolding: 'I looked for you, but you’d vanished' - Macleans.caAlec Bruce apologizes to the neighbour he berated for feeding the crows, after realizing that we all need to be ‘in this together’
Read more »
This Canada Day, the country must reflect on its history to write its future - Macleans.caAnita Li: Canada must return to its core values—sustainability, multiculturalism and human rights—which have not been upheld in recent years
Read more »
The sad politicization of Pride - Macleans.caKC Hoard: Pride parades, when stripped to their most core elements, are public acts of resistance against the powers that continue to limit queer people’s rights
Read more »
'Don’t ever wish our country to be a world power' - Macleans.caLetters to the editor, June 29, 2020: Readers weigh in on crushing—and coping with—the coronavirus, Camilla vs. Diana and a mass murder overshadowed by recent events
Read more »
How the 'Normal People' TV series redeemed the novel for me - Macleans.caThe relationship between Marianne and Connell in Sally Rooney's book was indeed very “sticky,” but I thought the writing didn’t do it justice, writes Dafna Izenberg
Read more »