Experts Confront Vote-By-Mail Controversy
Assignment for J310 Reporting Words.
HOUSTON — Prominent Republicans, from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to U.S. President Donald Trump, have warned of a causal relationship between the expansion of vote-by-mail and election fraud.
The Texas and U.S. Supreme Courts ruled to block an emergency expansion of vote-by-mail ahead of the Texas primary runoff, saying that a lack of immunity to the coronavirus is not a physical condition of eligibility for a mail-in ballot. Democrats say that the current election code discriminates against younger voters and those who fear for their health. Amid the partisan debate over voting rights in Texas, however, experts disagree about the validity of the competing statements.
Francisco Canseco, a former U.S. Rep. for Texas’ 23rd congressional district, now directs the Election Protection Project for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Canseco claimed he lost his reelection bid in 2012 because of fraudulent votes and vote harvesting in El Paso and other border counties.
“Everybody likes to say, ‘Oh no, there’s no such thing as voter fraud, and if there is fraud, it’s like spitting in the ocean,’” Canseco said.
The Office of the Texas Attorney General has successfully prosecuted 457 election fraud offenses since 2004, but Texans cast more than 92 million votes in that same period, according to the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Canseco reaffirmed that fraud is nonetheless a large-scale issue, despite the relatively low volume of prosecution.
Universal vote-by-mail also has the potential to erode civic trust, Canseco said, if an overwhelming amount of mail-in ballots in states without the proper infrastructure lead to delayed results or challenged elections.
“The important thing is, are we going to have a free and fair election, or are we going to let it go to all of these underground operatives that will change the will of the American people?” Canseco said. “It has to be one citizen, one vote. Not who can cheat the election and get away with it. If we go to all mail-in ballots, we’re opening the aperture for more fraud and more abuse of an already fraudulent system.”
Audrey Kline, the policy director for the National Vote at Home Institute, calls this argument, “malarkey.”
Fraud arguments don’t hold up, Kline said, referencing the Heritage Foundation’s database of election fraud in the United States. The database isn’t comprehensive, according to the website, but the numbers are still informative. Of its 1,285 recorded instances of voter fraud over the last 20 years, 204 involved fraudulent mail-in ballots. Only 143 of these resulted in criminal convictions, which would be about 0.00006% of total mail-in ballots cast, said the Vote At Home Institute’s CEO Amber McReynolds in an op-ed for “The Hill.”
The criminal consequences of such actions also prevent the likelihood of large-scale fraud, Kline said. In Texas, for example, the fraudulent use of a ballot is a third-degree felony, punishable by two to 10 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.
“It’s a whole lot cheaper to go out and buy digital ads and knock on doors and talk to voters, than it is to commit voter fraud,” Kline said. “Not only is it (voter fraud) technically very difficult to do, it is not economical.”
Claims of large-scale fraud are not only unfounded, but a universal vote-by-mail system also holds benefits for voters, Kline added. Research on down-ballot engagement in Utah’s 2016 election showed that counties with vote-at-home systems had a 5.5 percentage point increase in turnout in State House races, for example.
“Voting at home leads to a more informed electorate and a more engaged electorate,” Kline said. “You also see things that are a little bit more technical, but you see cost savings, you see the accuracy, security and accessibility of elections increasing.”
While Kline echoed Canseco’s statement that scaling up to allow universal voting by mail requires increased security measures, a comprehensive vote-at-home system is in many ways more secure, she said. The Vote At Home Institute recommends some best practices, including rigorous post-election audits, that have proven successful in five states.
“We have a pretty strong case that it (voting at home) is important in general,” Kline said. “But especially in 2020, it’s the safest way to vote in the middle of a pandemic.”
Public opinion about the coronavirus is another issue split along party lines. 81% of Republicans said voting in person during the pandemic is safe, and 75% of Democrats said it is unsafe, according to a UT/TPP poll in June. These results reflect the partisan debate about voting, in which fraud has become an “article of faith amongst Republicans,” said Joshua Blank, research director for TPP.
The perceived connection between the expansion of voting rights and fraud is only becoming stronger for Republicans over time, which Blank attributes to elite messaging. In an April poll by UT/TPP, 29% of Republicans were in favor and 59% were opposed to allowing all Texans to vote by mail in the November election. By June, 21% were in favor and 72% were opposed, despite the fact that COVID-19 cases were surging in Texas and that voting by mail is popular in important swing states and among older, rural voters in the Republican base.
“An aspect of the voting system in the United States that people fail to appreciate is that it’s not a process that has ever been designed to allow everyone to vote, and it’s never been designed to necessarily make it easy to vote,” Blank said. “Further, the design of our electoral process is in itself a political process.”
Because of these processes and partisan predispositions, it is difficult for elected officials to allow meaningful discourse about voter reform or any expansions to the franchise, even in a global pandemic, Blank said.
“This is about politics,” Blank said. “This is really about both sides trying to shape the rules to better advantage them in the present and the future.”
