Mail-in voting could disenfranchise millions

President 'onald Trump is suing 1evada over its re cent decision to send absen tee ballots to all voters, and warning the country ³There is 1O :A< =(5O ) that 0ail In Ballots will be anything less than substan tially fraudulent.” Trump¶s critics ar gue that there is no evidence that vot ing by mail results in fraud. Trump is right that mail in voting is a source of potential voter fraud, especially on the scale that is being proposed. But the bigger problem is not vote fraud ± ± it¶s vote failure.

There is plenty of evi dence that mail in voting has the unintended conse Tuence of disenfranchising of millions of eligible vot ers. A 0assachusetts Insti tute of Technology study of the presidential election found that about

. million voters said they reTuested mail ballots but never received them . million ballots that were sent out did not make it back to election officials and about , were re jected for a variety of rea sons ± ± either because they were postmarked after the election, arrived without a signature, were improperly filled out or did not match voting records. ³The pipe line that moves mail ballots between voters and election officials is very leaky,” the study concluded.

0ore recently, the 'emocratic primaries should serve as a cautionary tale. About si[ weeks after 1ew

, mail in ballots, of which state officials have already invalidated , . In California, election of ficials rejected more than

, mail in ballots in the state¶s 0arch pres idential primary. To put these numbers in perspec tive, Trump won the :hite +ouse in thanks to roughly votes in 0ichigan, Pennsylvania and :isconsin combined. In Pennsylvania alone, mail ballot problems kept about

, people from voting in a primary in a state that Trump won by just , votes four years ago. In )lorida, about , mail in ballots were not counted, and in 1evada, about , were rejected. In a close race, such failures could easily call the results into Tuestion.

1one of these problems were because of fraud. They were because of mistakes by voters, postal problems or the inability to handle the massive surge in ballots that overwhelmed elector al systems not eTuipped to handle them. If election of ficials had this much trou ble handing mail in ballots during low turnout pri maries, imagine what will

, happen in the general elec tion. Put aside the ability of election officials to process the results. 'oes anyone believe that the 8.S. Postal Service is ready to handle a sudden deluge of tens of millions of ballots right before (lection 'ay" 0il lions of ballots are inevitably going to be delayed, be mis directed or arrive without postmarks. And many will be invalidated be cause voters made mistakes filling them out and could not ask election workers for help marking the ballots correctly.

If mail in voting is per mitted on an unprecedented scale, millions of votes will be rejected and the election could be thrown the elec tion into chaos. Ironically, it could very well be 'em ocrats who end up crying foul. A study of Georgia¶s

midterm elections found that mail in ballots of ³younger, minority and first time voters are most likely to be thrown out.” A study of )lorida¶s midterms that same year determined that mail in ballots ³cast by Black, +ispanic, and other racial and ethnic minorities were more than twice as likely to be rejected as . . . ballots cast by :hite absen tee mail voters.” 'emocrats now pushing for mail in ballots will soon be claim ing they are a tool of voter suppression.

The 'emocrats¶ solu tion to these problems is to rela[ the standards for mail in ballots, such as the reTuirement that they be postmarked. 1ow that is an invitation to fraud. If a can didate is narrowly behind on election night, what is to stop their supporters from sending in a slew of ballots after (lection 'ay ± ± espe cially in states that permit ³ballot harvesting,” where campaign workers collect absentee ballots in bulk" There will be millions of blank ballots in circulation, because instead of sending ballots only to voters who reTuest them, many states intend them to send to every registered voter ± ± which inevitably includes many who moved or died.

This probably does not matter in deep blue and deep red states where the final result is not in doubt. But in swing states such as 1evada, :isconsin, 0ichi gan and Ohio, it could lead to disaster ± ± even if there is no fraud. 0ost states have no e[perience with mail in voting on this scale and are completely unprepared for what is coming. :e are conducting an unprece dented electoral e[periment in the midst of one of the most contentious elections in 8.S. history. The result could be a post election battle that will make the hanging chad controversy of Bush v. Gore seem mild by comparison.

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)ollow 0arc A. Thiessen on Twitter, #marcthiessen.