I believe you are, exactly as they intended, confounding mail in ballots, where an actual voter has to request a ballot, with vote by mail, where they mass mail ballots to everyone who has ever been on the never-purged voter roles, alive, dead, or moved.
Any number of ballots sent to nonexistent voters can be harvested from the trash cans at high turnover large apartment complexes and submitted.
...the trashcans by the mailboxes...