What You Need To Know About Vote by Mail
Vote by mail is the worst way to run an election. In 2020, it led to chaos and disenfranchisement. Election officials do not know what happened to nearly 15 million mail ballots in 2020. Another 560,000 voters had their mail ballot rejected by election officials.
Mass vote by mail requires highly accurate voter rolls. Otherwise, ballots end up at the wrong addresses and some people are even sent multiple ballots under slightly different versions of their name. Unfortunately, America’s voter rolls are filled with hundreds of thousands of errors.
Voting in person is the most secure way to run an election and gives voters an opportunity to correct errors on their ballots.
Unfortunately, you can’t unopen Pandora’s box. Vote by mail has been permanently adopted in many states. We need to focus on ensuring that states that do have vote by mail adopt safeguards to make it as secure as possible.
These safeguards include requiring voters to request a mail ballot and requiring a form of identification on the ballot such as the last four numbers of the voter’s social security number. Right now, eight states automatically mail ballots to every active registered voter. These states are California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington.
PILF investigators went to Nevada to visit some of the addresses on the voter roll. We know for a fact that in Nevada ballots are going to vacant lots, mines, and smoke shops. This is not a secure way to run an election.
Additionally, to ensure that Election Day does not drag on for weeks, states must require that all mail ballots arrive by Election Day.
These policies will help make vote by mail more secure, but the best way to vote will always be in person at your polling location.
Reports
As data from the 2022 elections becomes available, our experts are analyzing it. Automatically sending ballots to every active registered voter is recipes for chaos. Millions of ballots should not be in landfills and recycling bins when an election is taking place.
We have analyzed federal data by the Election Assistance Commission. These reports reveal that mass mail balloting in 2020 was a complete failure. Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin sent more ballots to the wrong addresses and election officials do not know what happened to more ballots than President Biden’s margin of victory in those states.
Former President Trump did an interview with Breitbart’s Matt Boyle where he cited these reports.
Trump argued that the sheer volume of the questionable outcome of those ballots we reported on using government data is well over the margins of the outcome of the election between him and Biden. “That’s the election right there,” Trump said.
Fighting Vote By Mail In the Courts
We secured legal victories to prevent states from unlawfully enacting universal vote by mail and accepting ballots received after Election Day.
In 2022, we filed a lawsuit against the Department of Elections for enforcing a universal mail-in voting law, and we won. The Delaware Supreme Court ruled the mail-in voting law violated Delaware’s Constitution. This is the first time a vote by mail election statute has been declared unconstitutional. This was a landmark ruling for the rule of law in elections.
In 2020, we won our lawsuit against the Virginia State Board of Elections to prevent the state from accepting mail ballots received after Election Day without postmarks.
Media Highlights
The fifth episode of our podcast, Protecting Your Vote, focuses on the many issues with conducting an election by mass vote by mail. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
TV and Radio Interviews
Articles and Editorials
J. Christian Adams: CA's Vote-by-Mail System Doesn't Work for our Elections
The automatic vote-by-mail experiment has failed. Will California lawmakers do anything about it?
J. Christian Adams: Nevada Proves that Automatic Vote by Mail Is the Worst Way to Run an Election
More mail ballots were rejected than Masto’s margin of victory over Laxalt. That doesn’t mean the outcome of the election was wrong. But we shouldn’t even have to wonder.
10 Million 2022 California Ballots Unaccounted For, Report Finds
California may have disenfranchised millions of voters in the 2022 primary and general elections, according to a new report from the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
J. Christian Adams: California’s automatic vote-by-mail system needs stronger safeguards
Automatic vote by mail elections also need near-perfect voter rolls. Otherwise, deceased registrants are mailed ballots and people registered more than once are mailed multiple ballots.
PA's Move To Count Undated Mail-In Ballots Could Spark ‘A Heck Of A Mess'
Public Interest Legal Foundation election lawyer J. Christian Adams said the Voting Rights Act forbids invalidating votes based on “non-material omission,” but courts have not currently determined whether this will impact the fight over counting undated mail-in ballots.
Charlotte Davis: Delaware’s Mail-In Voting Ruling Is A Victory For The Rule Of Law
Delaware’s mail-in voting law violated the Delaware Constitution, and the court recognized that violation. Such a ruling is a victory for the rule of law.
J. Christian Adams: Vote-By-Mail is the Worst Way to Run an Election
2020 proved that elections conducted by mass vote-by-mail need to be a one-time experiment. Elections should be conducted with transparency in person. When you vote in person, you are given the opportunity to fix any issues with your ballot.
J. Christian Adams: Nevada's Vote by Mail System is a Total Disaster
Let’s be clear, the delay in learning election results in Nevada and elsewhere is driven wholly by vote by mail. Without universal mail voting, we would mostly know who won elections on election night.
Adams & von Spakovsky: America’s hidden voting epidemic? Mail ballot failures
A new report has revealed how vulnerable voting by mail can be. It should alarm all who are pushing for all-mail elections: Based on federal data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, millions of mail ballots were never counted as completed votes.
Sixteen million mystery ballots demonstrate the need for vote-integrity efforts
Before mail-in systems became a favorite of national Democrats, the New York Times was reporting as basic fact, not opinion, that “votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth.”