States must start now for universal vote-by-mail; Congress and White House should help

Basic good business management says that you always have a Plan B in case Plan A won't work as expected.  Good managers recognize vulnerabilities in the organization and then design and implement a backup plan to use when the vulnerabilities become disasters.

There's no reason why government shouldn't act the same way.  Especially when it comes to voting, which is the foundation of democratic governance.

In-person voting is a great thing:  It's historic, nostalgic and sociable.  It's also vulnerable to a host of nasty things, some local at the precinct level -- neighborhood power outage; flooding from a broken pipe, etc. -- others of greater scope that could be state-wide or national -- a pandemic that interferes with the integrity of an election would be a disaster of the highest magnitude.

In-person voting is Plan A for most states.  There's a good chance it will be a failing plan for this November's election, possibly even for elections beyond this November's, because of the SARS-COV-2/covid-19 pandemic.  At this point, we don't know enough about the virus to understand what danger it presents in a few months', or a few years', time.

Vote-by-mail should be Plan B for all elections.  Or, at the least, Plan B should be a combination of vote-by-mail and in-person voting.  (In some states, it is already Plan A when combined with complementary in-person voting availability.)

I have been a permanent vote-by-mail voter for 40 years, having applied for that status based on a job that required frequent and sometimes last-minute travel that would cause me to be away from home on election days.  My experience with vote-by-mail has been flawless.

California has done away with the need to apply for such a status.  Starting with this year's recent primary election, all registered voters are mailed a ballot several weeks prior to the election date.  At least four other states also do universal vote-by-mail.  All states allow vote-by-mail for reasons of illness or travel.

Wisconsin's recent election is Exhibit A for why vote-by-mail should be available nation-wide.  Milwaukee, the state's largest city, intended to have 180 polling locations; instead, the pandemic caused staffing to shrink so much that it could open a mere five locations.  Fortunately, Wisconsin enables voters to request mail-in ballots at will, and many people had done so, thereby reducing the demand for in-person voting.

Vote-by-mail has enjoyed solid bipartisan support. . .and still does, according to a YouGov report released early this month.

But elected Republican officials, starting with President Trump, are blocking the common-sense preparations needed to have vote-by-mail universally available in time for the November elections.

An absentee ballot seems to be good enough for Trump to use for himself -- he used one in Florida's election -- and he has said that such voting should be available to older voters and members of the armed forces, voting groups that he thinks will be favorable to his reelection.

For all other voters, though, Trump says that the availability of vote-by-mail invites fraud that favors Democrats.

Voting fraud has been studied extensively and has been found to be exceedingly rare.  In fact, immediately upon his inauguration, Trump started a voting fraud investigation into the 2016 election.  After almost a year of existence, the investigation went out of business, having found no voting fraud.

The only recent evidence of voting fraud came from a 2018 North Carolina congressional election, and it favored the Republican candidate.

Anti-fraud measures for mail-in ballots are available.  At the individual voter's choice, a mailed ballot can be tracked via email and text messages, as is done in California and Colorado.  Other schemes can be devised and used, too. 

For example, my wife and I decided not to mail our ballots last month (even though we did not need to place postage on the envelopes!) and instead took them to our local voting center at a nearby fire station.  There, we were greeted by the friendly volunteer poll workers, one of whom took us on a tour of the place and described the use of the voting machines as well as the security measures available to both in-person voting and mailed ballots.  Without fanfare -- and without physical contact with a frequently-touched surface, or close proximity to another person -- we deposited our ballots into the appointed vault.

As for Trump's other complaint -- well, it's just a stalking horse.  Trump's true intent is to undermine the democratic process.  The health of our democracy depends upon the availability of the right to vote.  All political parties should want that.  At this point, Trump and the Trump Republicans oppose it.

In the United States of America, the voting process is managed by the states, not the Federal government.  However, Congress and the president can and should provide federal funding to the states to put vote-by-mail in place in time for the November elections.

Voters should not have to risk their health in order to cast their votes, or fear for their safety when they do so.  Vote-by-mail is a common-sense and proven voting method that minimizes those risks and fears.  Trump and the Trump suck-ups oppose this idea to make voting safe.  Democrats support it.

Work on this needs to start immediately in order to meet the needs of a November election.  There is no good reason not to do this.

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