The problem with mail-in voting is basically this, in every state you can vote by absentee ballot, particularly if you’re ill or disabled. And we obviously need that.
But all-mail elections have all kinds of security problems. And the reason is very simple, these are the only kind of ballots that are being voted out of sight and out from under the supervision of election officials.
That’s why it is, unfortunately, easy to not just engage in fraud in those kinds of elections, but it’s also easy for voters to be intimidated. And that’s a cause for concern and should be a cause for concern for anyone interested in having an election process that is fair and has good security too.
Of course, the problem with that is early voting has been shown to actually hurt turnout. And second, it has people voting weeks before Election Day, which often means they can miss important news connected with their choice of who they have voted for.
Anybody who doubts that, just take a look at what happened in the Super Tuesday primary at the beginning of March where you had major candidates—Sen. [Amy] Klobuchar, former Mayor Pete Buttigieg—[drop] out two days and one day before the Super Tuesday primary, and yet hundreds of thousands of individuals had already cast ballots for them in early voting states.
They couldn’t call those ballots back. In essence, you had hundreds of thousands of people who wasted their vote on candidates who had dropped out. But, because of early voting, there was nothing they could do about that.