The problem is that the in the US the right wing has claimed there was fraud with mail in voting. This means that if anyone mentions the issues with mail in voting they are assumed of doing the same thing.
No matter whether you are left or right, mail in (or god forbid online voting) is an horribly bad idea. The whole voting process should be transparent and visible from casting your vote (or someone elses) to seeing it counted. That is not possible with mail in voting so it allows for possible fraud (or even the suggestion of fraud as we see in the US).
Someone mentioned unique barcodes on ballots, great now you have eliminated voting anonymity.
Yes, voter suppression is a real issue mail in voting can help against, but IMO mandatory voting is the better solution.
I should have been more specific. The barcodes are on the return envelopes, not the ballots. They allow a ballot to be tracked by the voter to make sure its proccessed or sorted out before its tallied in the cases that a voter reports an issue, but at no point is who the person voted for tracked or logged. The tally process involved immediately discarding the envelope and separating it from the ballot itself when the votes are tallied, fully preserving anonymity.
The envelopes include voter signatures which are checked against voter registration, and the collection and processing follows a chain of custody. The tallying itself is monitored and transparent as well. The whole process is audited, because the paper ballots are retained and can be recounted if needed. You can view the process here:
Where I live (Austria), voting by mail is possible, but not the default. People who want to do it need to apply for it and sign that they will be unable to vote in person, for example due to being absent or for medical reasons. I don’t think anyone actually verifies this though, the voter is taken at their word that that’s the case.
The problem is that the in the US the right wing has claimed there was fraud with mail in voting. This means that if anyone mentions the issues with mail in voting they are assumed of doing the same thing.
No matter whether you are left or right, mail in (or god forbid online voting) is an horribly bad idea. The whole voting process should be transparent and visible from casting your vote (or someone elses) to seeing it counted. That is not possible with mail in voting so it allows for possible fraud (or even the suggestion of fraud as we see in the US).
Someone mentioned unique barcodes on ballots, great now you have eliminated voting anonymity.
Yes, voter suppression is a real issue mail in voting can help against, but IMO mandatory voting is the better solution.
I should have been more specific. The barcodes are on the return envelopes, not the ballots. They allow a ballot to be tracked by the voter to make sure its proccessed or sorted out before its tallied in the cases that a voter reports an issue, but at no point is who the person voted for tracked or logged. The tally process involved immediately discarding the envelope and separating it from the ballot itself when the votes are tallied, fully preserving anonymity.
The envelopes include voter signatures which are checked against voter registration, and the collection and processing follows a chain of custody. The tallying itself is monitored and transparent as well. The whole process is audited, because the paper ballots are retained and can be recounted if needed. You can view the process here:
https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voters/securing-your-vote
Mail-in voting can be wholly secure, and should be the default because of its efficieny in widening engagement with democracy.
It’s still much less transparent with more possibilities of things going wrong and it doesn’t guarantee a vote was done anonymous.
Mandatory voting is the much simpler solution
Where I live (Austria), voting by mail is possible, but not the default. People who want to do it need to apply for it and sign that they will be unable to vote in person, for example due to being absent or for medical reasons. I don’t think anyone actually verifies this though, the voter is taken at their word that that’s the case.