Boston Herald

Dems should also question mail-in voting

- BY RICH LOWRY Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.

There’s a giant scheme afoot to disenfranc­hise voters in November — it’s called mail-in balloting.

Mail-in voting has, like many things in our politics, taken on the aspect of tribal warfare — if President Trump is vociferous­ly against it, Democrats must be vociferous­ly for it, and vice versa.

Absentee voting is unquestion­ably less secure than in-person voting, but there’s no evidence of widespread fraud. Nor is there evidence that, at least prior to this campaign, mail-in voting has favored Democrats, as the president believes.

Trump shouldn’t be trying to delegitimi­ze the process, a point that journalist­s have often made. Yet there hasn’t been enough focus on the other side of equation: Does it make sense for Democrats to be fervent boosters of a process that may lead to a historic number of votes cast in a presidenti­al election not counting?

No matter what anyone says, there is inevitably going to be more mail-in voting in the fall, but inperson voting is superior. Only about one-hundredth of 1% of inperson votes are rejected, whereas rejection rates of 1% are common with mail-in votes, and some states exceeded that during their primaries this year.

This should be a five-alarm worry for Democrats. According to polling, almost twice as many Biden supporters as Trump supporters say they’ll vote by mail this year. According to NPR, studies show “that voters of color and young voters are more likely than others to have their ballots not count.” In another universe, if Trump were urging Democrats to stay away from the polls and instead use a method more likely to get their votes discarded, it’d be attacked as a dastardly voter suppressio­n scheme.

There are at least three ways that mail-in voting could contribute to a 2020 nightmare. Trump could be winning on election night, and the outcome slowly reverse over time. Delayed by the volume of mail-in ballots, states could blow past the deadline for finalizing their results. And if the margins in battlegrou­nd states are very close, rejected mailin ballots could lead to protracted, high-stakes court fights.

More than a half-million ballots were rejected in this year’s presidenti­al primaries. Ballots are discarded for improper postmarks and signatures, and mail-in voters are also more prone to accidental­ly vote for more than one candidate or make other errors.

In its primaries, New York delivered up the perfect storm of ramped-up mail-in voting and inadequate preparatio­n. In the 12th Congressio­nal District, it took weeks to declare a winner, and the number of rejected mail ballots was roughly three times Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s 3,700-vote margin of victory over challenger Suraj Patel.

What happened in New York easily could preview the general election. NPR notes that more than 23,000 absentee ballots were rejected in Wisconsin’s primary this year, exceeding Trump’s margin in the state in 2016.

In light of all this, it makes sense, first and foremost, to try to make more options available for in-person voting.

In addition, states should allow the counting of mail-in ballots prior to Election Day to minimize any swing in the count afterward. Congress should delay the date that states have to finalize their results, currently Dec. 8. What should be intolerabl­e is any attempt to change the rules after the fact, although it’s entirely conceivabl­e that Democrats will feel compelled after Nov. 3 to argue that the mailin voting that they’ve done so much to promote is desperatel­y flawed and deeply unjust.

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