You have to request an absentee ballot. I’ve done it a few times.
They want ballots mailed to every mailbox in the country.
Yes — and as part of that, they then have to accept every mail-in-ballot if it matches a registered voter.
And since you didn’t request the ballot, you could of course show up at the polling place and vote. When you do an absentee ballot, they mark you as such, and you can’t vote at the polling place. The entire thing is somewhat tightly controlled. When I did my absentee ballot for our primary, I first needed a signed request, although we were allowed to “auto-sign” online by providing identifying information. Then the ballot required that I sign an affidavit saying I had requested it, I was allowed to vote, and I had to have a witness sign that I did so, and that nobody helped me fill out the ballot.
There are no real controls with the “mail-in-ballot”. For example, you can’t require a witness, because the point of the mail-in-ballot is that you are hiding in your house and have no contact with anybody.
This is what makes it dangerous, they are writing the mail-in rules as they go. Plus, anybody can grab your ballot out of the mail and do it. Sure, they are forging a signature, but remember — there was no request, there is no signature to compare to, and no reason for anybody to check signatures.
And unless they are setting up controls, the same person could show up and vote. Remember, there was no request, and the ballot could show up on election day, so there would be no way to mark that the mail-in was used.
So, now you have a person who voted at the polls, who doesn’t know someone did a mail-in for them. Did the state set up a post-election comparison, where they go through the poll books, and discard any mail-in ballots that show up as voting at the polls? Do they then do an investigation of every ballot for which there was a vote at the polls?
If not, there is absolutely nothing preventing a mail carrier from simply delivering entire stacks of ballots to criminals. After all, people don’t really KNOW the ballots are coming. In october, they might say “hey, I never got a mail-in”, and they’ll contact someone, and people will assume that ballot got lost in the mail.
unsolicited mail-out ballots is a disaster. It is so certain to cause fraud that I feel like if the republicans actively ran their own ballot operation, I wouldn’t even blame them — because you know the democrats are going to do it.
Maybe they could air drop filled out ballots.