Vote by Mail: Overview

Introduction

The process known as vote by mail or mail-in voting has a long history. The United States first implemented voting by mail during the Civil War, so that soldiers on the battlefields could still cast their ballots in their home states. Over the next 150 years, states expanded the practice to allow any registered voter unable to be physically present at their polling place on Election Day to vote by mail if the reason for their absence met the criteria defined by the state.

In 2020 most states further expanded their vote-by-mail provisions to include all registered voters due to public health concerns raised by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This helped drive historic voter turnout in the 2020 presidential election, and some activists called for more permanent or federally mandated universal mail-in voting. However, this expansion also led to significant controversy and debate. In a sign of backlash, over the next few years several state legislatures passed bills restricting voting access. Opponents fear that broader access to vote by mail increases risk of fraud, coercion, and lost ballots, and creates difficulties in maintaining accurate voter rolls and signature verification. Proponents support voting by mail because it addresses public health and safety concerns while also expanding access to those who have difficulty accessing their polling location on election days and decreasing administrative overhead for running and staffing polling locations.

Understanding the Discussion

Absentee voting: Any system that allows registered voters to cast their ballots without being physically present at their polling location on the official election day. This includes mail-in ballots as well as those that must be dropped off at specific ballot collection locations.

Early voting: A system that allows registered voters to cast their ballots at the designated polling location before the official election day.

Notary public: A specially registered public servant who acts as an official witness when important documents are being signed and verifies the identities of signers and their signatures.

Special elections: Elections that are held at times other than standard election days, usually because a government seat has opened up unexpectedly and must be filled before the next major election is held.

Vote by mail: A system of absentee voting that allows registered voters to receive and return their ballots by mail, rather than at a physical polling location.

History

According to the Election Data Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the first instances of voting by mail in the United States occurred during the Civil War (1861–65). States established the system to allow soldiers on the battlefield to receive and return their ballots by mail. Over time, many states expanded this system to allow voting by mail for any registered voter who met specific criteria that meant they would be unable to vote in person. These criteria frequently included illness or disability, travel outside the region on an election day, and status as military personnel stationed overseas.

Under the Elections Clause of the US Constitution, establishing the “time, places, and manner” of elections is left up to the individual states, even for federal elections. Since voting policies and procedures are established on the state level, every state sets its own requirements to vote by mail, including who qualifies and how it is conducted. This creates a patchwork of rules and regulations that can vary significantly by state.

In 1978 California became the first state to allow all registered voters to request an absentee ballot without requiring an “excuse” for why the voter could not physically present at the polling location on Election Day. In 1998 Oregon voted to become the first state to distribute ballots by mail by default to all registered voters, for all elections. Colorado, Hawaii, Utah, and Washington State eventually followed suit. In these states, all registered voters automatically receive a ballot by mail. From there, procedures vary. Depending on the state, voters return the ballot by mail, drop it off in a ballot box at a designated location, or a combination of the two. The option to vote in person always remains.

To reduce crowding at polling locations and improve access for voters, many states and jurisdictions also established processes for early voting, where towns set up in-person polling locations prior to the official election day. Unlike absentee voting, early voting does not require voters to provide an excuse or to request a ballot in advance. Instead, registered voters simply show up to the polling locations during the designated times and vote as usual. This practice can improve voter turnout by reducing wait times at popular polling locations and allowing people greater flexibility in when they vote, which more easily accommodates situations like shift-work schedules and family needs. However, like standard voting, early voting still requires physical presence at the polling location.

Data collected by the US Census Bureau’s Voting and Registration Supplement of the Current Population Survey show that nontraditional forms of voting grew significantly from 1992 into the 2010s. Jordan Misra, writing for the US Census Bureau in April 2019, reported that nearly 40 percent of voters in the 2018 midterm election used alternative voting methods.

Vote by Mail Today

In 2020, public health and safety concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic sparked renewed interest in the vote-by-mail debate. Hoping to reduce crowding at polling sites and maintain standards for physical distancing and cleanliness, most US states expanded access to voting by mail during the pandemic. According to Kate Rabinowitz and Brittany Renee Mayes for the Washington Post, close to 180 million eligible voters in the United States could cast a ballot by mail in 2020. Thirty-four states and the District of Columbia allowed any registered voter to vote by mail as an absentee without an excuse for their absence; of these, five states conducted all-mail elections. The remaining sixteen states required an official excuse as to why the polling place is inaccessible in order for the voter to receive a mail-in ballot. Traditionally accepted excuses included illness or injury, planned travel outside of the area on the day of the election, attending out-of-state colleges or universities, being stationed overseas for military duty, or living abroad. While eight of the sixteen states expanded their original “valid excuse” approach to include COVID-19 concern, the other eight still required voters to provide a valid excuse beyond fear of COVID-19.

Efforts to further expand vote by mail led to some prominent legal cases. For example, in April 2020 several advocacy groups in Texas, including the Texas Democratic Party, League of Women Voters, Workers Defense Action Fund, and Move Texas Action Fund, sued to increase access to mail-in voting. The lawsuit cited a portion of the Texas election code that said that voters are eligible to vote by mail if, among other things, appearing at a polling place on Election Day presents a “likelihood . . . of injuring the voter’s health.” The plaintiffs alleged that, because of the pandemic, this clause applied to all voters. Judge Tim Sulak of Travis County agreed and ruled that “all persons” could vote by mail in Texas, but the ruling was immediately appealed. In May, a US district judge also ruled that Texas must allow all voters the opportunity to vote by mail because of COVID-19 concerns. The state of Texas again appealed, and the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit stayed the order while the appeal was pending. On July 2, the US Supreme Court declined to expedite review of the case and effectively postponed its decision, so the usual restrictions on mail-in ballots remained in place for Texas’ July primary elections.

Expanding access to mail-in ballots found support at the state level from both major political parties, but its opponents were mostly Republican. They were led by President Donald Trump, who falsely claimed that voting by mail increases voter fraud and gives Democratic candidates an unfair advantage. However, political statistics website FiveThirtyEight examined data from the 2016 and 2018 federal elections and concluded that voting by mail neither significantly increased voter fraud nor gave one political party a significant advantage over the other in the overall results. Other observers suggested that while voting by mail could slightly increase the engagement of younger and lower-income voters who are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates, it also makes voting more accessible for older voters who are more likely to vote for Republican candidates; as a result, the expanded access evens out across both parties. Nevertheless, pushback continued against the expansion of mail-in voting. In August 2020 the Trump campaign, the Republican National Convention, and the Nevada Republican Party sued the state of Nevada, seeking to block a new law that would automatically mail ballots to registered voters for the November 2020 election. However, this Republican challenge ultimately failed in court.

Adding fuel to the debate were questions regarding the ability of the US Postal Service (USPS) to handle the increased mail volume that widespread voting by mail would generate. As the postal service struggled with funding, some worried that ballots could be lost or delayed due to reductions in staff, delayed routes, and closed post office locations. Some voters and Democratic members of Congress expressed concern that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump ally and Republican political fundraiser who took over the agency in June 2020, might deliberately sabotage the USPS’s ability to deliver ballots in a timely manner. Such speculation increased after DeJoy instituted cost-cutting measures that effectively slowed mail delivery and reorganized the agency’s top management. By August 2020 efforts were underway to negotiate a bipartisan economic stimulus package including a funding grant for the USPS, along with other funding to assist states with upcoming elections.

Despite the pandemic, the United States Elections Project calculated that more than 159.69 million voters, representing 66.7 percent of those eligible, cast their ballots in the November 2020 election—a volume not seen in over a century. Of those who voted, an estimated 46 percent voted by mail, according to research by the MIT Election Data and Science Lab. Early voting also increased significantly from previous elections, with only about 28 percent of voters casting their ballots in person on election day. The sharpest increases in mail-in voting were seen in states that strongly supported the practice, for example by preemptively mailing all registered voters a ballot. States that continued to require an excuse to vote by mail saw comparatively little increase. Although Trump and his allies attempted to stir controversy by claiming irregularities in the counting of mail-in ballots in many swing states, these baseless claims were rejected in multiple lawsuits. Data did indicate that absentee votes trended strongly Democratic in the election, but experts largely attributed this to politicization of the issue at the time rather than any inherent advantage. For instance, Republican politicians' vocal criticisms of mail-in voting were thought to have discouraged Republican voters from casting mail-in ballots.

This historic turnout in the 2020 election did incur a backlash among conservative state legislatures, as seen in the increase in state bills restricting voting access in 2021. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, by February 19, 2021, forty-three state legislatures were considering 253 bills that would restrict voting access, many of which included limits on voting by mail. (In a different set of forty-three states, 704 bills had provisions that would expand voting access; in some cases, a bill could be both restrictive and expansive.) One of the highest-profile examples was Georgia's Election Integrity Act of 2021, which was signed into law in March 2021 and generated national controversy for its impact on voting rights. The law required Georgia voters who want to vote by absentee ballot to fill out an application.

Partly in response to such state restrictions, progressives continued efforts to protect mail-in voting and other voting rights at the federal level, though with limited results. In March 2021, the US House of Representatives passed the For the People Act, which aimed to expand voting access across the country. However, it stalled in the narrowly divided US Senate. Some states also continued to expand voting rights. For example, in June 2021 Nevada and Vermont made their universal vote-by-mail systems, introduced for the 2020 election, permanent.

Debate over vote by mail remained prominent in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election. As the Republican candidate, Trump continued to advance baseless allegations of fraud in postal voting. Ahead of the election, thirty-six states and Washington, DC, offered no-excuse voting by mail for all eligible voters. The remaining fourteen states offered voting by mail only with an approved reason.

These essays and any opinions, information, or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

Bibliography

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