Mailing a casted ballot is an older way of voting, but it is gaining much attention as the global health crisis continues to affect the daily lives.
According to NPR, as mail voting accelerates in becoming the norm, however, some politicians do not like the method, specifically some Republicans including US President Donald Trump who stand against the expansion of mail voting which is slowly happening nationwide.
Mail-in Voting Defined
Mail voting or voting by mail are phrases that cover a wide scope of policies but targets to offer more options to voters who want or need to cast a ballot in a specific location aside from the polling area.
According to MIT's Election Data Lab, the practice of the voting method dates back to the Civil War wherein they gave soldiers an opportunity to vote from the battlefield.
In the late 1800s, States started to expand laws on absentee voting to cater to voters who were sick or away from home during Election Day.
In the present, all of the States in the US allow a part of their voting population to mail their votes.
There are also states that permit all registered voters to receive a mail ballot while other states require a valid reason or an excuse to avail the option as policies in terms of voting in the US vary state-by-state and have an individual requirement for the mail ballot to be counted.
Read also: Mail-in Voting May Turn Election Day into Election Week, Can It Also Cause a Rig in the Results?
Americans' stand on Mail-in voting
Even before the global health crisis sent officials handling the elections to scramble in ensuring that people could vote safely, the method is already rising in the United States.
In the 2018 midterm elections, close to a quarter of all voters used the mail voting method and the numbers are more than double from the rate of mail-voting in the last 20 years.
The big increase came from several states that have transitioned to an all-mail election process in the past few years.
The method gained positive response nationwide and according to the recent report of the Pew Research Center poll, they found that over 70% of Americans who think that they want to vote via mail should be able to and granted.
The opposing Republicans to mail voting came from the states wherein they do not have wide access imposed on the method.
Republican and Trump on Mail Voting
In a report by New York Times, it was stated that US President Donald Trump admitted that he voted by mail several times but he does not support the mail voting expansion in the country.
Numerous tweets of Trump circulated online with false claims, wherein he mentioned that the process of the secretary of state of Michigan is illegal by mail all registered voters in the state ballot request forms, he also misrepresented the decision of California to mail all registered voters ballots.
Even Twitter added a label "fact check" to his tweet regarding California's decision to weigh in the scenario.
The feasibility of the whole country switching to mail voting for the November election.
Democrats in US Congress currently works to expand the voting method, Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Amy Klobuchar both introduced the 'The Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act' from the start of the year as the bill aims to drastically spread mail voting accessibility nationwide.
