US voters worry COVID-19 threat could persist well into November and this could force them to vote by mail.
President Donald Trump does not seem too keen on the vote-by-mail option and has expressed concern that it could threaten the Republican Party. Tuesday’s primaries in Wisconsin saw mask-wearing voters in long queues keeping a distance of six feet from one another—but the number of voters had sharply reduced according to an AFP report. And this led to increased calls for vote-by-mail policy.
Voting by mail has been used by thousands of diplomats and military service members for decades in the US during election time.
But Trump repeatedly has made unsupported claims that vote-by-mail leads to massive election fraud. “Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for our country because they're cheaters,” he said Tuesday.
Other states want to avoid fighting the dilemma between staying safe at home versus heading out to vote. And therefore want to push for voting by mail.
The vote-by-mail system is already fully implemented in five states-- Utah, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, and Oregon-- and partially in most other states. Advocates of vote-by-mail say the system will increase voter participation. Amber McReynolds, the chief executive of the National Vote At Home Institute, says 40 per cent of non-voters cite inconvenience, stating they cannot get away from work or wait for hours at a polling place.
Reynolds also added that fraud in vote-by-mail is exceedingly low-- a few hundred cases in an election with a half-million votes cast.
Trump, who voted via mail in the Florida primaries on April 1 wrote on Twitter, “Absentee Ballots are a great way to vote for the many senior citizens, military, and others who can’t get to the polls on Election Day. These ballots are very different from 100% Mail-In Voting, which is “RIPE for FRAUD,” and shouldn’t be allowed!”
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The 2016 election that saw Trump win the White House, 24 per cent of votes were cast by mail; in the 2018 mid-term Congressional polls, the figure rose to 26 per cent. In five states where vote-by-mail is fully implemented, the figures were over 50 per cent.
On Wednesday, Trump called for Republicans to oppose vote-by-mail by saying that the method wasn’t tamper-proof.
Voting by mail is a common practice in Florida. And Republicans have won elections with residents opting to vote-by-mail, reads a Politico report. Chairman of the Republican Party in Florida and a Trump ally Joe Gruters said that the party intends to encourage vote-by-mail, even as the President stands opposed to it.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi too, on Thursday, said that Trump needs to have more faith in the Republican voters and that they will still turn out with vote-by-mail. She also said that the president should not ask people to stand in long queues to cast their votes during the coronavirus crisis.
