Voting amid the coronavirus pandemic has been a complicated process due to the confusion of citizens, mail-ballots going missing, and long waiting lines in front of some polling centers. Tuesday saw the biggest challenge of voting amid the spread of the virus, with eight states going forward with voting, including the District of Columbia.
The balloting served as a dry run to the upcoming election in November and offered a first look at the challenges that come with conducting a national scale election with the coronavirus's continuous threat, reported Reuters.
Mail-in ballot voting
On Tuesday, all participating states urged or spread that mail-in voting as a safer method of elections amid the COVID-19 threat. The process massively reduced the number of face-to-face polling that government officials had difficulties recruiting workers for.
The move resulted in a surge of requests for mail-in ballots and cast across several states as well as complaints regarding delayed ballots and inquiries asking where people can vote after polling locations were consolidated.
The interim director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, Suzanne Almeida, said that the most crucial information within the process is the voters' confusion with the whole ordeal.
According to The New York Times, President Donald Trump has shared his dissatisfaction with mail-in voting. Stopping anyone from getting an absentee ballot, however, is something the president has not done.
Also Read: Fact Check: Trump Claims California Governor Will Send Millions of Ballots to Illegal Immigrants
With the US president's support for some individuals to move forward with absentee voting such as older citizens, military personnel serving internationally, and as Trump votes absentee as well, he has expressed his unproven claim that mail-in voting will result in election theft.
Last month, Trump said during a White House briefing that we would have thousands upon thousands of people gathered in one living room where they sign ballots everywhere.
Fraudulent votes
Historically, ballot stuffing scandals have been an issue as well as an absentee vote scandal that Republicans in North Carolina were involved with, in 2018, as reported by NPR. Nothing in modern American politics suggests that the same would happen again.
The small number of frauds in voting is mostly conducted by insiders and not voters, which limiting of mail balloting or ID laws would not solve. One clear example is where two local government officials pleaded guilty and revealed that they accepted bribes amounting to $2,500 to fix ballot boxes in three Philadelphia judicial races.
Officials added that working through the number of mail-in ballots would delay the final tally. Governor Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania ordered the extension of the deadline for handing in mailed ballots from June 2 to June 9 in several counties, including Philadelphia.
Pennsylvania, along with Indiana, Maryland, and Rhode Island, has continued its voting process. The move comes after they delayed the process from earlier this year to avoid the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic that has resulted in the deaths of more than 105,000 people across the United States.
There is no sufficient evidence to link mail-in voting with any sort of fraud, as observed by several studies.
