An Invitation in the Mail for Election Fraud Washington state sent a ballot to my home—which is now in Texas.By Scott Hogenson
https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-invitation-in-the-mail-for-election-fraud-11596385418?mod=opinion_lead_pos7
Uncertainties over Covid-19 have spurred significant interest in voting by mail. The process differs substantially from absentee voting, which requires a voter to file an application and creates a documented paper trail. Vote by mail is simpler: Ballots are printed and sent to registered voters, who complete and return them.
Consider Washington state. Vote by mail was required in 2011, so the government has had nearly a decade to refine the process. True to form, I received my Aug. 4 primary ballot several weeks ahead of the election date, leaving me ample time to consult my conscience and return my ballot.
The U.S. Postal Service appears to be operating fairly well. I still had plenty of time to vote because the USPS helpfully forwarded my ballot to my new address—in Texas.
Our family moved from Washington state to suburban Dallas in mid-June, but I have been invited to participate in Washington state’s August elections. So has my wife. Given that we aren’t residents of Washington, we won’t vote there. That would be fraudulent. I could probably get away with it, but the little angel on my shoulder shouted down the little devil on the other.
Therein lies but one of a cavalcade of problems with vote by mail. There’s no way of knowing how many nonresidents will receive ballots they’re not legally allowed to cast. There is no way to confirm how many eligible voters don’t receive ballots, how many dead people receive ballots, how many people receive multiple ballots, how many ballots actually make it through the mail in time, and how many ballots aren’t delivered to the place where they’re to be counted.
This anecdote isn’t unique, but you wouldn’t know that by reading the news. A Google search of “vote by mail fraud” returns articles mostly about how fraud is some sort of “myth,” a “false narrative,” something “not likely” to occur.
Even if every bureaucrat and election volunteer involved in every part of the process is honest and efficient, voting by mail is still fraught with problems. In my case, I don’t suspect malfeasance on the part of election officials. It takes time to purge voter rolls, and it’s entirely reasonable for this not to happen in the month between my move and the delivery of my ballot to Texas.
We can hope that individual voters will be honest. But passions run high in presidential election years, especially this one. Vote by mail may sound like a good idea, but it isn’t. It can’t be. It is subject to too many vagaries, too many errors, too much malevolent temptation. The American republic has done reasonably well with voting at polling places, and a radical revision of the voting process three months ahead of a presidential election would be doomed to inaccuracy and, yes, fraud.
Mr. Hogenson is president of Hogenson Communications.
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