Mail-In Ballots Undermine Trust in Elections

What Democrats and their allies in the media call “voter suppression,” most countries call “having a fair election”

Jeff Bezos’s recent Op-Ed in his own newspaper, the Washington Post, actually had one piece of wisdom that made a lot of sense – and therefore sent the paid Democrat propagandists who work there into paroxysms of rage.

“Voting machines must meet two requirements,” the billionaire wrote. “They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.”

I believe that what Bezos said about voting machines applies even more dramatically to elections themselves.

First, elections must accurately count the vote. 

But second and even more important, they must assure the population that they accurately count the vote.

Even if America’s chaotic, disorganized, constantly shifting election systems in 50 different state jurisdictions did accurately count the vote – which is highly unlikely given the amount of documented fraud and bureaucratic incompetence that has been detected – it fails utterly in the second mission.

All of the myriad changes that Democrats and their left-wing lawyers have pushed through in recent years to boost “voter turnout” and their chances of victory – universal mail-in balloting, early voting, no I.D. requirements to vote in person, so-called ballot harvesting, and even the acceptance of ballots days after an election without even a postmark – all guarantee that Americans will increasingly doubt that the vote is fair and accurate. 

What Democrats and their allies in the fakenews media call “voter suppression,” most countries call “having a fair election.”

On Sunday, I voted early after Mass.  There were big Vote Early signs all over the neighborhood, so I walked over to the local library and checked in to vote.

Everything seemed very straightforward. 

They didn’t ask for any I.D., of course.  But I gave my name, birthdate and address.

If I had that information for someone else, I could have voted for them. Even just a few years ago, you had to sign a registrar when voting in person. Thanks to the Democrats in my state, that requirement no longer exists. Even requiring a signature amounts to “voter suppression.”

The election workers quickly printed up a customized ballot on the spot (with my city’s local-only referenda included).  I filled in the ballot, and then took it to the final “station.” 

I fed the paper ballot into an electronic ballot reader – and that was it.  I collected my “I Voted” sticker and walked out.

However, in my state everyone gets a ballot in the mail whether they request it or not.   

I received at my house no fewer than five other ballots for children no longer living at home.  I threw them all away, but I could easily have committed a crime and filled them in for my kids. 

That’s because the so-called “signature verification” that states use for universal mail-in ballots is a joke.

I have friends who regularly mark an X for their signature, or just make a scribble utterly unlike their real signature, just to test the system.  The ballots always are accepted (you can check online if your ballot has been accepted). 

I do the same thing now with credit card signatures. 

As a test, I now routinely sign with an X and it is always accepted.  (Even just a few years ago, alert waitresses at fancy restaurants would sometimes question my scrawled signature, and ask me for I.D.  But that was only because I put “Ask for I.D.” in the signature line of my credit cards.)

In many states, the “proof” of identity is on outside envelopes which are then set aside once opened. Supposed “recounts” and “audits” therefore prove nothing: they are simply recounting anonymous ballots that are impossible to trace to actual voters.

Democrats long ago realized that mail-in voting allows them to commit the perfect crime.  They can cheat and their cheating is effectively untraceable. 

On November 4, 2023, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots without a postmark can be received and counted until four days after the election.

Democrats now can and do “harvest” millions of ballots and, once the outside envelope is separated from the ballot, there is no way to verify if such “harvested” ballots are legitimate.

In addition, the lists of voters in many states are even more of a joke than the signature verification system.

After all, these are government workers we’re talking about, the same people who run the post office and the DMV.

Take Wisconsin.

“In what remains a nail-bitingly close presidential race, fewer than 25,000 votes could decide Wisconsin and its 10 Electoral College votes,” writes Deroy Murdock of the American Spectator.

Yet a recent audit discovered that at least 1,447,434 mail-in ballots in that state were mailed to people with questionable or non-existent addresses — including 262,488 people who permanently moved out of state and 3,408 duplicate registrations.

Political scientists often concede that at least some voter fraud exists but insist that it’s not “widespread” or  not “sufficient to sway the outcome of the election.”

Yet in extremely close elections in which the margin of victory is in the five, four or, in the case of the 2000 election, three digits, even small-scale, local fraud could potentially sway an election.

The 2000 election of Bush v. Gore came down to 537 votes in one state, Florida!

And such small-scale local fraud does occur. 

In 2020, two Democrat operatives in Los Angeles were charged with submitting more than 8,000 fraudulent voter registration applications during the 2020 election as well as with falsifying names, addresses and signatures. 

In the 2024 election, one county in Pennsylvania is investigating 2,500 voter registrations forms that contained false names, suspicious handwriting, questionable signatures or incorrect addresses.

The truth is, confidence in America’s democratic system is fading fast. 

One Gallup poll found that 59% of Americans don't have confidence in the honesty of their elections, while only 40% say they do.

The reason is clear:  the very methods that Democrats push to boost their success – such as universal mail-in ballots, no I.D. to vote and an “election season” that lasts for weeks to accommodate ballot-harvesting – undermine confidence that the elections are fair.

In Nordic countries, where elections are conducted with paper ballots cast in person, confidence in election integrity is very high.  Fully 89% of respondents in Finland and Norway, and 87% in Sweden, say their elections are fair and honest. 

For the sake of the country, therefore, politicians in both of America’s main parties should return to the commonsense system that worked well for 200 years – paper ballots submitted on a single day, in person. 

No electronic voting machines, no “drop boxes,” no ballot harvesting, no early voting. The only exceptions we should allow for what was once called “absentee ballots” is active-duty military personnel or diplomats stationed overseas.

If America continues on its current path, the only people who will believe in the legitimacy of its elections will be CNN pundits and others paid to do so.

The people themselves will assume, as polls show they already do, America no longer exists as a self-governing republic. 

Its elections will be viewed as a sham used by unelected members of a ruling elite, such as whoever is telling Joe Biden what to do and say, to stay in power.  

Robert J. Hutchinson is the author of numerous books of popular history. He writes about history, politics and ideas at www.DisputedQuestions.com.