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Arguments for and against no-excuse absentee/mail-in voting
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| Select a state from the menu below to learn more about its election administration. |
Absentee/mail-in voting is voting that does not happen in person on Election Day but instead occurs another way—usually by mail.[1] All states allow for some form of absentee/mail-in voting. Some states require voters to provide an accepted excuse—such as being away from their home county on Election Day, being required to work during polling hours, or having a disability—to vote by mail. Other states allow any eligible voter to cast an absentee/mail-in ballot. Most states require voters to fill out an application to receive an absentee/mail-in ballot.[2]
Whether no-excuse absentee/mail-in voting is beneficial or harmful, and whether it should be expanded or restricted, are subjects of debate.
| Supporters of expanding no-excuse absentee/mail-in voting argue that it makes voting more accessible to particular demographics, that it does not significantly benefit one political party, and that best practices exist for preventing fraud and improving reliability. |
| Opponents of expanding no-excuse absentee/mail-in voting argue that it increases the risk of fraud, that it delays election results, and that ballots are too important to send through the mail. |
On this page, you will find:
- Arguments at a glance: A brief summary of support and opposition arguments
- Support arguments in detail: Detailed support arguments from a variety of sources
- Opposition arguments in detail: Detailed opposition arguments from a variety of sources
- COVID-19 pandemic debates: Links to Ballotpedia resources with more information on the debates about absentee/mail-in voting policies during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic
- See also: Links to Ballotpedia resources with more information on absentee/mail-in voting
Arguments at a glance
This section includes quotes briefly summarizing some of the most prevalent arguments for and against expanding no-excuse absentee/mail-in voting.
| Support | Opposition |
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| "Voting absentee or by mail is a safe, trusted and age-old practice. Moreover, expanded access to absentee voting comports with conservative principles, which helps explain why a number of conservative state policymakers have advanced proposals to achieve it. Finally, and critically, policymakers should take note that polling data indicate very clearly that the public strongly favors expanded access to absentee voting and that its results are partisan-neutral." -Kevin Kosar, Marc Hyden and Steven Greenhut, R Street (2020)[3] |
"A big challenge for states ramping up their mailed ballots is how to count them in a timely manner. Mailed ballots tend to come in waves, and many jurisdictions allowed ballots to be postmarked by Election Day. So you could have a situation where tallies announced by in-person voting and ballots returned before the deadline show one candidate in the lead, Morley, with Florida State University, said. 'But you still have tens of thousands of uncounted ballots, and you are setting yourself up to potentially say: ‘Now that we finished counting the votes, actually the other candidate is the winner.’' -Amber Phillips, staff writer, The Washington Post (2020)[4] |
Support arguments in detail
Three arguments in favor of no-excuse absentee/mail-in voting are that it makes voting more accessible to particular demographics, that it does not significantly benefit one political party, and that best practices exist for preventing fraud and increasing reliability. This section includes quotations from a variety of sources exemplifying these arguments.
No-excuse absentee/mail-in voting increases accessibility
In a 2019 press release, ACLU Virginia argued that allowing no-excuse absentee/mail-in voting in Virginia would increase accessibility for minority voters, voters with disabilities, those in rural communities, and more. On its website, ACLU Virginia describes itself as "a private, non-profit organization that promotes civil liberties and civil rights for everyone in the Commonwealth through public education, litigation and advocacy with the goal of securing freedom and equality for all." [5]
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If Virginia law limits no-excuse absentee voting to in-person only, qualified voters may be excluded from participating based upon a lack of readily accessible transportation, geography, income status, physical disabilities, and the constraints of modern-day individuals and families. There are localities in Virginia where voters do not have ready access to transportation that permits them to travel to designated locations to vote by absentee ballot in-person. In rural jurisdictions, some voters are not able to access the registrar’s office, which may be on the opposite side of the county. In urban locations, voters without vehicles may not have ready access to public transportation to travel to a distant absentee voting site. … Additionally, there are voters whose work or childcare schedules simply cannot accommodate the registrar’s limited office hours so that they could cast in-person absentee ballots. We are also concerned that by limiting absentee voting to in-person, it may disproportionately impact minority and rural communities and persons with disabilities.[6] |
” |
| —ACLU of Virginia (2019)[7] | ||
No-excuse absentee/mail-in voting does not significantly benefit Democrats or Republicans
In a 2020 Science Magazine article, Warren Cornwall wrote about a research study on the partisan benefits of no-excuse absentee/mail-in voting that was conducted by political scientists Michael Barber of Brigham Young University and John Holbein of University of Virginia:
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[The researchers] found that in presidential and midterm general elections between 1996 and 2018, switching to all-mail voting increased the percentage of residents who voted by 1.8% to 2.9%, they report today in Science Advances. When it came to the Democratic share of the vote, they found a tiny uptick in the share of votes that went to Democratic candidates for Congress, governor, and president—approximately 0.7%. But the difference was so small that the margin of statistical error means it’s possible there was no effect at all, John Holbein at the University of Virginia says. 'There might be a teensy, tiny effect on Democratic turnout.'[6] |
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| —Warren Cornwall, Science Magazine (2020)[8] | ||
Best practices prevent fraud and improve reliability
In a 2020 analysis for the Brennan Center for Justice, which describes itself as a nonpartisan law and policy advocacy organization working to advance reforms to improve democracy, Wendy Weiser and Harold Ekeh wrote that best practices exist in the states that primarily use absentee/mail-in voting systems. They argued that data shows incidents of fraud associated with these best practices are rare:[9]
| “ |
In the last two federal elections, roughly one out of every four Americans cast a mail ballot. In five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington — mail balloting has been the primary method of voting. In 28 additional states, all voters have had the right to vote by mail ballot if they choose, without having to provide any reason or excuse. Over time, a growing number of voters have chosen that option. Since 2000 more than 250 million votes have been cast via mailed-out ballots, in all 50 states, according to the Vote at Home Institute. In 2018, more than 31 million Americans cast their ballots by mail, about 25.8 percent of election participants. Despite this dramatic increase in mail voting over time, fraud rates remain infinitesimally small. None of the five states that hold their elections primarily by mail has had any voter fraud scandals since making that change. . .While mail ballots are more susceptible to fraud than in-person voting, it is still more likely for an American to be struck by lightning than to commit mail voting fraud.[6] |
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| —Wendy Weiser and Harold Ekeh, Brennan Center for Justice (2020)[10] | ||
Opposition arguments in detail
Three arguments against expanding no-excuse absentee/mail-in voting are that it increases the risk of fraud, that it delays election results, and that ballots are too important to send through the mail. This section includes quotations from a variety of sources exemplifying these arguments.
No-excuse absentee/mail-in voting increases risk of fraud
In a 2020 op-ed, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) argued that fraud is more likely to occur through absentee/mail-in voting than in-person voting:
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[B]oth sides of the political aisle have long agreed that voting by mail-in ballot increases the likelihood of fraud. ... In Texas, to prevent fraud, we must show an ID when we vote just as we are required to show a form of ID at the airport, government buildings, financial institutions, and during many other daily activities. But there is no effective way for election officials to ensure that mail-in ballots are not requested fraudulently. ... [M]y office has conducted over 300 investigations of mail-in ballot fraud. Our investigators have spoken with thousands of victims of mail ballot fraud over the years, and they commonly tell us they were pressured and harassed by campaign workers to sign up to vote by mail, vote a certain way, or hand over their ballots. The common denominator in mail ballot fraud is that the votes of the victims are cancelled and replaced by those of paid campaign workers. Every fraudulent vote disenfranchises a lawful voter by canceling out their lawful vote.[6] |
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| —Ken Paxton, Texas attorney general (2020)[11] | ||
Absentee/mail-in voting delays election results
In a 2020 opinion piece in the Minnesota Post, Gentry Lange, director of The No Vote By Mail Project, argued that absentee/mail-in voting delays the reporting of election results:
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Moving to all-mail voting would be nothing short of a catastrophe for our democracy. Just consider how long it takes to count a vote by mail election. When I ran for city council in Bremerton, Washington, in 2009 there were roughly 7,000 votes cast, and that election alone took weeks to decide. This is what an all-mail voting system will do to the country, expanded to an exponentially larger scale. It will make all elections less accurate, less precise, and require far longer to tabulate. Elections that formerly took place at the school or down the street were counted in one night, but when ballots trickle in through the mail, the process takes a month or more to decide. Even the proverbial election for the county dogcatcher would not yield a result for weeks.[6] |
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| —Gentry Lange, director of The No Vote By Mail Project (2020)[12] | ||
Ballots are too important to send through the mail
In a 2022 article called "We Shouldn’t Be Promoting Voting By Mail," Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, argued that ballots are too important for voters to trust sending them through the mail.
According to its website, the Heritage Foundation says its mission is "to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense."[13]
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Ask yourself: If you won $500 million in the Powerball lottery, would you put your winning ticket into an envelope and trust the U.S. Postal Service to deliver it to the state agency that administers the lottery? Or would you want to deliver your ticket personally to lottery officials to ensure that they received it and acknowledge that you are the owner of that ticket? The answer is pretty obvious to just about anyone. So why would we want to encourage voters to cast their ballots through the mail or place them in unsupervised, unsecured “drop” boxes instead of voting in person in a polling place? A polling place under the bipartisan supervision of election officials and the observation of poll watchers has numerous advantages. It helps ensure not only that the ballots are completed by the registered voters and deposited in a locked, sealed ballot box, but also that the voters’ eligibility and identity are verified; that no voters are pressured or coerced to vote a particular way by candidates, party activists, and political guns-for-hire, who are all prohibited from being inside the polling place; and that no ballots get 'lost' in the mail or not delivered on time.[6] |
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| —Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow, The Heritage Foundation (2022)[14] | ||
Absentee/mail-in voting during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic
Several states temporarily changed their absentee/mail-in voting procedures in response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
Click here for a collection of noteworthy statements and articles dealing with the debates surrounding these changes.
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ Some states call early voting "in-person absentee voting." On this page, absentee voting refers to voting ahead of Election Day that does not take place in person.
- ↑ National Conference of State Legislatures, "Absentee and Early Voting," July 30, 2019
- ↑ R Street, "The Conservative Case for Expanding Access to Absentee Ballots," June 2020
- ↑ The Washington Post, "Examining the arguments against voting by mail: Does it really lead to fraud or benefit only Democrats?" May 20, 2020
- ↑ ACLU Virginia, "About Us," accessed October 17, 2019
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ ACLU Virginia, "ACLU-VA Urges Lawmakers to Support No-Excuse Absentee Voting," January 16, 2019
- ↑ Science Magazine, "Do Republicans or Democrats benefit from mail-in voting? It turns out, neither," August 26, 2020
- ↑ The Brennan Center for Justice, "About Us," accessed July 20, 2023
- ↑ Northern Kentucky Tribune, "The false narrative of vote-by-mail fraud; mail ballots essential during COVID-19," July 27, 2020
- ↑ Office of the Attorney General, "Mail-In Ballots: A Threat to Democracy," September 1, 2020
- ↑ Minnesota Post, "Just say no to voting by mail," April 8, 2020
- ↑ The Heritage Foundation, "About Heritage," accessed September 20, 2019
- ↑ The Heritage Foundation, "We Shouldn’t Be Promoting Voting By Mail," December 6, 2022
