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, strip clubs, casinos, and bars. 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. 

PILF filed litigation in the key state of Nevada. We identified commercial addresses on the voter roll including strip clubs, casinos, bars, gas stations, and tattoo parlors. Nevada’s policy of automatically mailing a ballot to every active registered voter makes it essential that election officials have accurate voter rolls and are not mailing ballots to addresses where no one lives. PILF filed lawsuits to force Nevada election officials to investigate these addresses and fix any errors on the voter roll before 2024 ballots hit the mail.

 

In August, Clark County gave in. Election officials in the state’s most populous county investigated these commercial addresses and fixed errors on the voter roll. This victory ensured that mail ballots will not be going to addresses where people do not live. PILF is still fighting against Washoe County.

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.

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Articles and Editorials

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