FPI / September 15, 2020
“We’re ready to deliver for you. Make sure you’re ready too,” states a postcard from the Untied States Postal Service (USPS) pertaining to mail-in voting for the 2020 election.
The USPS postcard urges voters to request a ballot at least 15 days before Election Day, Nov. 3, and mail ballots at least seven days prior.
“Start today,” the USPS says. “If you vote by mail, we’re committed to providing officials ample time to complete the process.”
Following are key data points about a highly unusual election year in the United States.
- Due to the coronavirus pandemic, it is estimated that 80 million Americans will vote by mail in the 2020 presidential election, nearly double the number of 2016.
- According to Ballotpedia.org, 12 states have switched to automatic mailings, either ballot applications or ballots themselves. All retain in-person voting. Before the virus, five states were conducting mass-mail voting while also opening precincts.
- "Generally, there are two types of mail-ins: absentee, in which a single voter requests an application, and mass-mailed, in which everyone on a voter roster automatically receives an application or ballot," Washington Times reporter Rowan Scarborough noted.
- And, though Democrats and their major media allies continue to deny it, the potential for fraud from mass mail-in voting remains real.
- Thirty states changed various voting rules due to the virus, such as easing absentee ballot requirements.
- The remaining 20 states made no changes. In Florida, for example, a citizen can vote by mail the same way as before by individually requesting a ballot and turning it in by 7 p.m. on Election Day.
- Maryland is mailing every registered voter an application. Virginia is not, according to Ballotpedia.
- Ballotpedia.org's state-by-state report on mail-in ballots can be viewed here
- In Nevada, officials in Las Vegas-centered Clark County sent 1.3 million ballots, not applications, to everyone on its voter list for the June primary. Only 305,000 were mailed back and counted. Nearly 225,000 were returned by USPS as undeliverable. That left 700,000 ballots unreturned.
- USPS Inspector General Tammy L. Whitcomb on Aug. 31 issued a report criticizing local election officials for using outdated envelopes that lack barcodes, making ballots untraceable. Whitcomb also said election boards have too-short deadlines for making sure mail-in ballots reach counters by Election Day.
- The Public Interest Legal Foundation submitted court briefings in Georgia and North Carolina that asserted that thousands of people in both states voted twice in the same election in 2016 and 2018. Georgia’s secretary of state reported this month that 1,000 people voted twice in the June primary.
- One claim by Democrats and the major media is that the Postal Service conspired to remove thousands of blue collection boxes. A USPS report before the 2016 election said 12,000 boxes had been removed the previous five years during the Obama administration because they were underused.
- The Postal Service said it is delivering 30 percent fewer pieces of first-class mail each year than it did 10 years ago, from 82.7 billion to 55 billion in 2019.
