Liberals pulled out every stop in their efforts to block voter identification laws, which are perfectly reasonable measures to boost public confidence in voting. Their objections to measures that nearly every democracy uses to uphold election integrity became so needlessly ferocious and nasty as to leave one wondering about their real motive.
They released dubious statistics about “millions” of adult citizens lacking the same identification they’d need for a lease, a mortgage, or a plane trip. They also said requiring ID is racist, even though there is no evidence nonwhite citizens are less likely to have ID. And they bleated ID requirements depressed the nonwhite vote.
One of the more interesting and less tendentious arguments they made was that voter fraud was more likely with voting-by-mail. Absentee ballots, they consistently and repeatedly argued, were far more susceptible to fraud than the sort of in-person fraud that voter ID was meant to combat. There were also news stories to that effect. As the New York Times reported, and this was a news piece, not commentary, “Voting by mail is now common enough and problematic enough that election experts say there have been multiple elections in which no one can say with confidence which candidate was the deserved winner.”
Typical was the argument made in a 2016 piece by Slate, originally headlined, “Voter fraud exists through absentee ballots, but Republicans won’t stop it.” The argument: “If Republicans were truly serious about eradicating voter fraud, they would severely restrict absentee voting, permitting it only when voters have a good excuse, like illness. Why don’t they do so? Because absentee ballots are widely considered to favor Republicans…”
Such arguments are so unfashionable now, and Democrats’ diversionary, bad faith arguments on this issue have subsided because they have lost their utility. Suddenly, the Left finds it unconscionable to restrict mail ballots in any way. State governments must send them to every address on record without even checking the voter rolls.
In this context, it is understandable that Republicans should become cynical about their rivals’ Damascene conversion to mail voting. Yet they must not embrace such cynicism, especially at a time when older voters might put themselves at risk by showing up at voting sites where hundreds or thousands of people will filter through in a matter of hours.
Done properly, mail balloting can encourage participation without creating opportunities for fraud. Fortunately, most Republican state legislatures recognize this.
If they are concerned, state officials can prepare for an expansion of absentee voting by making sure voter rolls are clean, as federal law already provides and requires. All states that require excuses for absentee voting should make sure that fear of infection from the coronavirus is considered a sufficient excuse, at least for this year’s elections.
From there, each state will likely take a different approach. For its upcoming primary, Idaho went all-mail and sent out postcard applications for no-excuse absentee ballots to all eligible voters.
Missouri, as state Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz wrote for the Washington Examiner, still expects most voters to cast ballots in person, but it has enacted a temporary expansion of its existing absentee balloting eligibility for this year’s election. This makes sense, given that the pandemic is a temporary problem, and lawmakers can always come back and extend it if they see fit.
As Wisconsin proved when it held an election in early April without a surge in coronavirus deaths, the risks of voting in person are probably exaggerated. Still, people are afraid. Republicans cannot put themselves in a position where they are inflexibly opposed to expanding mail balloting under these circumstances. They need to find a regulated, fair, sensible form of it that they can be comfortable with. And then, instead of complaining, they need to get their voters to use it.
