CBS Vote By Mail Experiment Suggests 21% of Ballots Won’t Arrive On Time; 3% of Voters Disenfranchised

Voting in person at the polls is still considered the most secure way to cast a ballot.

Yet, Democrats are hijacking the COVID-19 pandemic to push for nationwide vote-by-mail policies.

But according to CBS News, this may not be as secure as many people think:

Mail-in voting, for many, is as simple as sending a letter, but rules vary across the country for when a voter can get their ballot and when it should be returned. In 2016, more than 73,000 out of 33 million mail-in ballots arrived too late to be counted.

Many Americans are expected to vote by mail for the first time in November 2020 because of coronavirus concerns, so "CBS This Morning" sent out 100 mock ballots, simulating 100 voters in locations across Philadelphia, in an experiment to see how long one should give themselves to make sure their vote counts.

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For the experiment, a P.O. box was set up to represent a local election office. A few days after the initial ballots were mailed, 100 more were sent.

The mock ballots used the same size envelope and same class of mail as real ballots, and even had mock votes folded in to approximate the weight. The biggest difference: real mail-in ballots have a logo that is meant to expedite them. "CBS This Morning" was unable to include those the trial.

A week after initial ballots were sent, most ballots appeared to be missing from the P.O. box.

"I don't see anything back there for you," a postal worker told Dokoupil when he received the mail. "That's all I have back there right now."

After asking for a manager and explaining the situation to them, the votes were found.

"They had them somewhere else," the postal worker said.

Then, another problem — missorted mail.

"We got a birthday card from Mike to Ronnie," Dokoupil said, as he read a postcard mistakenly placed in "CBS This Morning's" P.O. box. "Have a sweet b-day. Get it? There's a bee on top."

The postcard, along with another piece of missorted mail, was then sent to the correct recipient.

Out of the initial batch mailed a week earlier, 97 out of 100 votes had arrived. Three simulated persons, or 3% of voters, were effectively disenfranchised by mail by giving their ballots a week to arrive. In a close election, 3% could be pivotal.

Four days after mailing the second batch of mock ballots, 21% of the votes hadn't arrived.

According to Postal Service recommendations, "voters should mail their return ballots at least one week prior to the due date."

However, nearly half of all states still allow voters to request ballots less than a week before the election.

Tammy Patrick said many states' mail-in voting policies simply do not take the postal system into account.

In many states, a few thousand votes is separates the winner from the loser.

Some of the margins are as little as 1 to 3 percent.

With such tight margins, lost ballots or misdelivered ballots can severely impact the outcome of the election.

Beyond delivery issues, there are many people that are afraid of election interference through vote-by-mail efforts or ballot harvesting.

Vote-by-mail issues are no longer just theory.

Now, they are proven fact.

18,500 ballots in Florida were tossed out because they arrived too late. In Nevada, 6,700 ballots were similarly rejected.

Again, when an election is so tight, a few thousand votes could be the difference between who wins the White House!

The Washington Post confirms:

More than 18,500 Floridians’ ballots were not counted during the March presidential primary after many arrived by mail after the deadline.

In Nevada, about 6,700 ballots were rejected in June because election officials could not verify voters’ signatures.

And during Pennsylvania’s primary last month, only state and court orders prevented tens of thousands of late-returned ballots from being disqualified.

As a resurgence in coronavirus cases portends another possible flood of absentee voting this fall, the issue of rejected ballots has emerged as a serious concern around the country, including in presidential battleground states and those with races that will decide control of the House and Senate.

While the number of rejected ballots in Florida and Nevada represents a fraction of those cast in their primaries, the unprecedented shift toward absentee voting during the coronavirus pandemic could make such margins potentially significant in the fall. In 2016, roughly 80,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin helped Donald Trump win the White House.

The rejection of ballots because of mail delays, signature match problems and errors in completing and sealing the forms could end up disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of people, voting rights advocates warn. It could also fuel doubts about the integrity of the 2020 vote, which Trump has already claimed without evidence will be “the greatest Rigged Election in history.”

The growing risks has party officials and voting rights activists on high alert, raising the stakes for dozens of ongoing legal battles over absentee voting rules and placing additional pressure on election officials, whose staffs and budgets are already stretched thin by the demands of administering the vote during a pandemic.

As more is learned about the pandemic, it is clear that we can safely vote in-person while protecting vulnerable populations.

This also protects the integrity of our democracy by ensuring that the deserving candidate wins!

President Trump is correct to continue pushing for in-person voting this November!