Mail-In Voting Didn't Help Or Hurt Either Party In 2020 Election

Republicans seem convinced that absentee voting (mail-in voting) cost them the 2020 presidential election. They believe it increased the number of voters, and when more voters participate they don't do well.

And because of that belief, Republican legislatures in many states are trying to pass a whole range of laws to suppress voting in the future -- including making it harder to vote by mail.

But their belief about mail-in voting (like their belief in widespread voter fraud) has no basis in fact.

Several scholars did a study and produced a report for the Stanford University Institute for Economic Policy Research. They found that mail-in voting did not help or hurt either of the two parties in the 2020 election. Here is the summary of that report: 

The 2020 U.S. election saw high turnout, a huge increase in absentee voting, and brought unified Democratic control at the federal level — yet, contrary to conventional wisdom, these facts do not imply that vote-by-mail increased turnout or had partisan effects. Using nationwide data, we find that states newly implementing no-excuse absentee voting for 2020 did not see larger increases in turnout than states that did not. Focusing on a natural experiment in Texas, we find that 65-year-olds turned out at nearly the same rate as 64-year-olds, even though 65-year-olds voted absentee at much higher rates than 64-year-olds because they could do so without having to provide an excuse. Being old enough to vote no-excuse absentee did not substantially increase Democratic turnout relative to Republican turnout, as the increase in Democratic absentee voting was offset by decreases in Democratic in person voting. Together, the results suggest that no-excuse absentee voting mobilized relatively few voters and had at most a muted partisan effect despite the historic pandemic. Voter interest appears to be far more important in driving turnout.

Texas Is Headed For A Record Election Turnout This Year

 

In the first 14 of 18 days of early voting in Texas, 6,925,900 people have voted in person and 877,690 mail-in ballots have been received. That makes 7,803,590 votes that have already been cast in this election.

That's only about 1.1 million votes short of the total 2016 election votes (which was a record for a presidential election in Texas). With 4 more days of early voting, mail-in ballots continuing to arrive, and Election Day voters yet to be counted, it undoubtably will be a record voter turnout in the state for this election.

Poll Shows Most Voters Support Mail-In Voting

The charts above reflect the results of the latest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between May 23rd and 26th of a national sample of 1,157 registered voters, with a 3.4 point margin of error.

Trump and his congressional Republican cohorts are fighting against giving Americans the chance to use mail-in voting. But once again, this puts them at odds with the voting public.

About 65% of registered voters support mail-in voting (including 84% of Democrats, 53% of Independents, and 42% of Republicans).

Trump and congressional Republicans are afraid they will lose if large numbers of voters turn out in November. But they may lose votes now by putting voters in danger by blocking efforts to let everyone vote by mail.

Studies Show Trump/GOP Are Wrong About Mail-In Voting

Democrats are pushing the government to allow mail-in voting in every state for the November election. The Coronavirus pandemic will still be around at that time (since it is highly unlikely that a vaccine will be developed by then), and they think Americans should be able to exercise their right to vote without having to expose themselves to the virus.

Republicans are against allowing mail-in voting nationwide. Their "excuse" for preventing mail-in voting is that it is open to fraud. They also believe that mail-in voting tends to favor Democrats. Both of those are wrong. Mail-in voting has been subjected to very little fraud in the states where it is used, and neither party benefits from mail-in voting.

The truth is that the Republicans have been reading the polls, and they don't like what they see. They are trailing, and if everyone votes they are likely to lose. They see their best chance of winning as voter suppression (causing as few people as possible to vote). They have many ways to accomplish this, and the newest is to scare people into staying away from the in-person voting sites (which mail-in voting would cure).

Here is what the non-partisan site The Fulcrum has to say about mail-in voting:

Voting by mail does not help Democrats more than Republicans and does not incubate fraud — but does generate a bit more turnout, a pair of academic studies out Thursday conclude.

The twin reports, one from Stanford and the other from the Union of Concerned Scientists, come as the debate about making elections more flexible in the face of the coronavirus has become increasingly partisan.

Although voting in person, the method used by three-quarters of Americans before this year, currently poses serious health risks to both voters and poll workers, President Trump is opposing efforts to broadly expand absentee balloting by November. He says the GOP will suffer and that a wave of widespread cheating will be the major reason.

There's no evidence of such partisan advantage in the detailed results from the past dozen elections in California, Utah and Washington. They were analyzed by the Democracy and Polarization Lab at Stanford, which chose the states because each steadily expanded voting by mail, county by county, in the last two decades so that it is now nearly universally used. 

The data showed "a truly negligible effect" on partisan turnout rates when comparing the counties with and without the system, the researchers said. The effect on partisan vote share was similarly indistinguishable from zero. But the switch did boost turnout modestly across the board in each state, by 1.9 to 2.4 percentage points. 

The data includes every election from 1996 to 2018, so the results could not be more current.

The effort to debunk the view that mail balloting fuels election fraud was conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists with researchers at UCLA and the University of New Mexico. "Voter fraud in U.S. elections continues to be extremely low, and people should not be forced to put their health at risk to exercise their right to vote," their report concluded.

The report was based on an exhaustive aggregation of government and nonprofit group studies about election crime going back four decades. It made extensive use of a database of cases between 1982 and this spring assembled by the Heritage Foundation, the premier conservative think tank. It has found just 207 fraudulent absentee ballot cases out of 1,277 instances of credible voter fraud — or 16 percent of the total.

The social scientists noted that in Oregon, the first of five states to institute a system where every voter is proactively sent a mail-in ballot for every primary and general election, more than 2 million votes were cast in the 2016 presidential election — and after investigating 56 cases of possible fraud, the state concluded just 10 ballots were cast in violation of state criminal law.

Public Disagrees With Trump/GOP About Mail-In Voting

The chart above is from the NBC News / Wall Street Journal Poll -- done between April 13th and 15th of a national sample of 900 registered voters, with a 3.27 point margin of error.

Donald Trump is opposed to voting by mail. He said it promotes fraud. And the congressional Republicans are backing him on that. They have blocked attempts by Democrats to pass a nationwide mail-in voting bill (at least for this election during the Coronavirus pandemic).

There is no evidence of widespread fraud with mail-in voting. The Republicans are just trying, once again, to suppress voting. They know that when the voters turn out in large numbers, it tends to favor the Democrats. This is just one more effort to keep as many people from voting as possible.

But it puts them at odds with most Americans. About 58% would support a law allowing all Americans to vote by mail, and another 9% would support allowing it for this election only. That's two-thirds (67%) of voters who would support allowing mail-in voting in this November's election. People want to vote in this important election, and they would prefer to do it safely.

The Republican opposition to mail-in voting may actually hurt their own candidates -- at least in red states. Democrats have been chomping at the bit to vote Trump out of office for over three years now. They will vote -- even if they have to crawl over broken glass on their hands and knees to do it. They will put on their masks and gloves and show up at the polls.

But will red-state Republicans and Independents? They could well think that because they live in a red state, their vote is not really needed -- and stay at home rather than possibly expose themselves to a deadly virus.

Republicans could be hurting themselves as much as they hope to hurt their opponents by refusing to allow mail-in voting.

USPS Is Campaign's Biggest Beneficiary

It looks like one big winner has already been decided in the 2012 political campaign -- the United States Postal Service. Spending on presidential campaign mailings was already over $28.9 million at the end of August. That tops the 2008 campaign's spending for the entire election cycle, which was only $27.9 million -- and you know the mailings going out to voters won't ease up any in September and October (but will probably increase).

The Postal Service had hoped to rake in about $285 million (in all races -- local, state, and federal), but it's now looking like they'll easily top that. The USPS is now hoping to top $338 million (which was its take in the 2010 election). But it could be even more. Political mail makes up about 15% of campaign spending, and the Center for Responsive Politics estimates that spending could top $2.5 billion -- which would give the USPS a windfall of about $375 million.

And it couldn't have come at a better time. The Postal Service has been having financial problems since Congress passed a bill in 2006 requiring it to donate over $5 billion a year for 10 years for future retiree health benefits. In fact, the USPS was expected to have a serious cash crunch in October. While the campaign money hasn't solved all their problems, it does look like it will take care of their immediate cash problems. And since they go into the holiday mailing season soon after the election, it looks like they will be OK until next year.

An added benefit this year is from spending by the super-PACs. While they spend a lot on TV, they like to use mailings because that lets them target the individuals and areas they are interested in reaching (without wasting money on places where the outcome is already known). And the super-PACs don't get a discount on their mailings like the campaigns do. They must pay the regular price.

I have to admit that I no longer even open any of the political mail that I get. It goes straight from the mailbox to the trash can -- regardless of which party has sent it. But I hope they go on spending that money on mailings. I have a daughter who makes her living by hauling the mail -- and she could use a little job security.

Wounded Soldiers Not Getting All Their Mail

Once again we find the Bush administration failing our soldiers. Bush continues to ask our troops to do the impossible -- to referee a bloody civil war where all sides hate us as much as they hate each other. But he doesn't seem to be willing to give them the tools they need (they're getting poorly-armored vehicles and second-rate body armor) or take care of them after they're seriously wounded.

Everyone has already heard about the horrid living conditions at Walter Reed Hospital that went unreported and ignored for far too long. Now we learn that wasn't the only problem at Walter Reed that was being ignored.

The Army has discovered over 4,500 packages and other pieces of mail that was undelivered in the hospital mail room. Some of this mail dates back to May of 2006 -- over a year ago! The Army has fired the mail contractor and ordered a team of soldiers and civilians to get this mail delivered.

The soldiers in Walter Reed have given us their best -- to the point of being seriously wounded. Many of them are maimed for life. It is the job of our government to see that they get the best care possible when they return.

If the government can't even do as simple a task as delivering their mail, I have to wonder what else they are failing to do for these brave soldiers. Once again the Bush administration shows its utter incompetence.

And don't even bother trying to tell me this wasn't Bush's fault. If he didn't know about it, he should have. He should have people designated to see that these soldiers get our government's best effort without excuses.

The legacy of the Bush administration is to enrich corporations like Halliburton, while 3,520 of our soldiers have died and thousands of the wounded get substandard care. Hell, they can't even deliver the mail!

It is time to act in defense of our soldiers. It is time to demand that Bush bring them home. Immediately!