"Motor voter" has enormously bloated the registration rolls with people who will never vote and mail in balloting has simply enabled massive fraud using the names of those who will never vote. Just check the Chicago board of elections for the 2020 election and find all the precincts reporting +90% turnout, all of which correspond to the poorest minority neighborhoods. Any questioning of those results is then met with accusations of "racism." That's how the game works.
“I recall when in college I had to go to a clerk’s office to request an absentee ballot, and my request was received with an id check and considerable suspicion.”
I have been voting absentee for years here in Montana.
I stopped voting in person when the Democrats gerrymandered my district...my voting place used to be at a country club I would drive by every day...
The new voting place was a volunteer FD which on a map is just two miles away, however this being Montana it was two miles on the other side of a large mountain range. I drove my Wife and her sister with MS to our new voting place...it took about a half hour. Then we had to — literally walk over a creek on a 2 x 12 (no handrails for handicapped folks like my Wife’s sister).
Sure the station has been upgraded since but it’s nice to get my ballot in the mail, research the candidates and bills. I drop off the ballot at the county court house. If mailed the ballots MUST be received by election day.
It is illegal to drop off more than 1 ballot with our having to sign an affidavit explaining why you have an additional ballot.