Voting by mail: how does it work and are falsifications possible

President Donald Trump said repeatedlythat his opponents are using mail-order voting to falsify election results. They allegedly add ballots on behalf of dead voters or simply add envelopes with votes for the candidate they need. We decided to figure out how mail bulletins are checked and how likely falsifications are.

Photo: Shutterstock

Elections by mail - as they are

Voting by mail is not an invention of the 2020 pandemic year. It was used in many previous elections by the military and people who could not come to the polls. In 2016, 33 million, or about a quarter of all votes cast, were cast by mail-in ballots. Trump had no complaints about them then. In 2020, the number of people voting by mail tripled (to 100 million people) due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Voting by mail can be of two types - universal and conditional (on request). The states of Colorado, Utah, Washington, Oregon and Hawaii use universal mail-in voting. They send ballots to all registered voters several weeks before Election Day, meaning there is virtually no personal expression of will and there wasn’t long before the pandemic. It is noteworthy that in almost all elections the turnout there (if you can call mailing ballots that way) is on average almost 10% higher than in other regions, reports ACLU.

Other states vote by mail through so-called absentee ballots. Voters must request that their local election office send them a ballot (this can be done through a form on the election board's website or by mail). Some states require a voter to have a valid reason to vote by mail, while others do not require a specific reason (in 2020, many states allowed the pandemic to be cited as a reason).

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There is no evidence that voting by mail increases the risk of fraud. Moreover, the very process of such voting provides for several levels of verification and protection in order to minimize the possibility of fraud. Let's walk through the whole process step by step.

Where do voters get mailing ballots?

In the five states with universal mailing, ballots are automatically sent to all registered voters with no action other than registering as a voter and updating their information in the database (this usually needs to be done a couple of months before an election).

In other regions, after receiving a request for a mailing ballot, the commission checks the data of the person indicated in the application: whether he is a registered voter in this district, whether he has already been sent a ballot, etc. The ballot application is then scanned and added to the voter's account in the US-wide database. Thus, one voter cannot request a ballot twice (or rather, he can request at least 10 times, but he will not be sent more than one ballot). Sending a ballot to a dead person is possible if the information about him in the voter database was not updated in time. But for this, someone else must request this ballot on behalf of the deceased, and this is already a criminal offense. As a result, the vote of the deceased voter will not be credited anyway (there is an explanation why below).

The path of the ballot from voter to commission

As soon as the voter made a mark in the mailing ballot, put it in a special envelope (with a note that this is a mailing ballot and a request not to delay its delivery), it can be handed over to the postman, taken to his post office, thrown into a special blue ballot box to send mail or take it to the local election commission, near which special ballot boxes are installed to collect such ballots.

Photo: Shutterstock

If you choose mail, you should take into account that the USPS (United States Postal Service) processes 182 million priority items (including bulletins) daily, which may delay delivery a little. As soon as your ballot is processed, it receives a postage stamp with the date and place of dispatch (in most states, it is the dispatch date that is key for counting the ballot when counting votes). In the processing center, a special machine takes a photo of the envelope and turns it into digital data, which is stored in a special database, with which, if necessary, it will be checked whether you are sending your ballot to the correct address of the voting point where you are registered, as well as the date of dispatch, etc. information that may be relevant to the authenticity of the newsletter.

Some states offer dedicated newsletter tracking sites, apps, and other services. This can always be done over the phone by calling the local election commission, explains CNN.

How the commission checks the ballot after receiving

After receiving the bulletin, the commission photographs the envelope, verifies all the information on it (name, address, signature) and again compares it with the data in the database. At this stage check information in other databasesand if the voter dies or is otherwise not eligible to vote, this will be revealed. In addition, if his signature on the envelope (a prerequisite for postal voting) does not match the signature on the license or in the passport (which is in the database), then the ballot will not be counted and a request for clarification of the data will be sent to the voter.

After verification in the presence of a representative of the Democratic and Republican parties (the process takes place in a special closed room), the ballot is removed from the envelope. After that, it is scanned, and the paper version is stored in a special room in case of a need for a recount or audit. On November 3 (or the state's deadline for mailing ballots), scanned images of ballots are automatically sent to a computer with a special counting program that produces the results.

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A significant disadvantage of such voting is the counting. It can take several days for all mail-in ballots to be counted, which has led to the delay in results this year. By the laws of many states, all ballots with a postage stamp must be taken into account no later than November 3, and such, due to delays in the mail, may arrive several days after the election date.

So what about the falsifications

So: just throwing in extra ballots or “dead souls” in sufficient quantity to change the voting result is not possible at such levels of checks.

Falsification of mailing lists is extremely rare. A nearly 20-year Heritage Foundation study that analyzed 15,5 million mailing lists in Oregon found only 14 fraudulent attempts, or 0,00009%. A Washington Post analysis of mail-order voting in Colorado, Oregon and Washington found only 0,0025% of the ballots mailed in 2016 and 2018 to be tampered with.

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