Shelzin
Equal Opportunity Asshole
- Jul 15, 2012
- 7,610
- 4,171
- 928
- Banned
- #1
Trump’s concern about mail-in ballots is completely legitimate
No one questions that mail-in ballots have much higher rates of not being counted. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study found that in the 2008 presidential election, 7.6 million of 35.5 million mail-in ballots requested were not counted because they never reached voters or were rejected for irregularities. That is a failure rate of more than 21 percent. In 2008, it did not matter because the election was not particularly close and mail-in ballots only accounted for a fraction of votes cast. But imagine the impact that would have in a close election in which mail-in voting is tried on a massive scale.
If mail-in ballots are adopted widely for the 2020 election, mass failures would be inevitable because about half the states have either no or extremely limited vote-by-mail options, and thus lack the experience or infrastructure for sending out, receiving or securing millions of mail-in ballots. We’d be conducting an experiment of unprecedented scale right in the middle of one of the most contentious elections in U.S. history.
I expected that some news media somewhere would say something... But I didn't think it would be the WPO saying it. Good on them.
No one questions that mail-in ballots have much higher rates of not being counted. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study found that in the 2008 presidential election, 7.6 million of 35.5 million mail-in ballots requested were not counted because they never reached voters or were rejected for irregularities. That is a failure rate of more than 21 percent. In 2008, it did not matter because the election was not particularly close and mail-in ballots only accounted for a fraction of votes cast. But imagine the impact that would have in a close election in which mail-in voting is tried on a massive scale.
If mail-in ballots are adopted widely for the 2020 election, mass failures would be inevitable because about half the states have either no or extremely limited vote-by-mail options, and thus lack the experience or infrastructure for sending out, receiving or securing millions of mail-in ballots. We’d be conducting an experiment of unprecedented scale right in the middle of one of the most contentious elections in U.S. history.
I expected that some news media somewhere would say something... But I didn't think it would be the WPO saying it. Good on them.
