As the election day is getting closer, more people are starting to claim how there is a high possibility for manipulation with the ballots and a fraud. According to some researches, there is indeed a low possibility of fraud. However, most of these accusations don’t have any proves. The main reason why people are suspecting that there is a high chance for these elections to be manipulated is that a high percentage of the population will vote by mail. Also, there are some similar allegations during previous elections in 2016, where an affair about alleged leaked emails played a big role in the outcome. The interesting fact is that both Trump and Biden are accusing each other of potential fraud.
On the other side, people who are working in the Federal Election Commission, such as Ellen Weintraub, are saying that there is no reason to doubt that there will be any problems during election day. President Trump said that the best solution to test the system is to try to vote by both methods, and if you are not able to vote in person after sending a mail, the system is working properly.
Voting by Post
The system of voting by mail was available during the last elections as well. However, there is a much bigger demand this year because of the pandemic of coronavirus. A lot of people would avoid public voting because of the risk of getting infected by COVID-19. Moreover, some states with the highest number of patients are going to make voting only available by mail. Those states are New Jersey, Colorado, California, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Hawaii, Vermont, and Washington. Also, there is a chance that more states will follow the same rule. On the other side, states, where you can vote in public, will request a special note of why someone would choose to vote by post. Some of the legit reasons are if a voter is older than 65 or if he is currently out of state where he is registered for voting.
Are There Any Evidence of Fraud?
According to President Trump, there is a possibility that a team of people will organize and sign thousands of ballots without monitoring. Also, according to many experts, there are flaws in the system with a chance for someone to vote twice, in person, and via post. However, experts have presented many studies according to which there is no evidence that rigging elections in this way is possible. Also, while there are many accusations from both sides, there is still no crucial evidence about the possibility of fraud during voting. We have seen some cases of fraud in the past.
For example, during the election in North Carolina in 2018, there was a fraud revealed as well as in New Jersey. However, the level of rigged votes was minor at that level, where it cannot significantly affect the results in any way. Nevertheless, the main issue is that most people will vote by post, and absentee ballots always represented an issue and caused the highest number of frauds. Another example is elections in New York, where they had a much higher number of ballots than people registered there.
Is Mail Voting Secure?
Besides the many accusations that this system has many flaws that allow potential cheating, you have to know that cases of rigged ballots are isolated and very rare. When we look at the statistics of mail voting between 2000 and 2014, there were only around 30 cases of fraud in the whole country. States like Utah, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado, where absentee ballots are the main choice of voting for a long time, had no only some minor cases where fraud was revealed. When it comes to security measures, you have to know that there are several levels of security that are different in various countries.
For instance, you will have to sign a statement that you have voted in the District of Columbia, while officials in Alabama requests a copy of ID along with two witnesses or a notary. Moreover, people who are working for political organizations are allowed to monitor the process of votes counting. Furthermore, there are bar codes on the ballots that allow the officials to secure them properly. Even though there are high levels of security for mail voting, there are still many people afraid of this method and thinking about how there is a high possibility for people to vote twice.
Still, you should know that trying to vote twice is considered as a crime, and these cases are very rare. During the last presidential elections in 2016, there are around 8,000 cases where people voted in both ways. Moreover, with the advancements in technology, there is the ability to create a huge database where people are going to be checked whether they already voted or not. We already have such a system in North Carolina, where a voter is being tracked by the electronic poll base, where each person will be removed from the poll after they receive an absentee ballot with its name.
Conclusion
While politicians are trying to gain more people on their side by claiming how there will be a great number of double-voting, changing the ballots, voting for people who were not interested in voting, and more, you have to know that, in practice, we have seen only around 1,300 proved cases of voter fraud in the last 30 years, and almost all of that people were charged as criminals. However, a lot of people are still claiming how there is a much higher number of rigged votes that are passing undetected, which can especially become a problem during the upcoming elections because of the great increase of people who will vote via mail. Nonetheless, despite the claims of politicians, experts who are working for the Federal Election Commission guarantee that even though a lot of people will avoid voting in public, there will use the advanced systems to secure fair and legit elections.
