Ensuring Greater Trust in Mail-in Voting | The American Spectator

In recent weeks, President Donald J. Trump has doubled down on his call to eliminate mail-in voting (except under specially prescribed circumstances). He is rightly concerned that mass voting by mail potentially undermines the security and trustworthiness of elections. Although in recent years many states have taken steps to better secure the mail-in vote, too many vulnerabilities remain.

However, there is a downside to eliminating mail-in voting, which is that much of the public values its convenience, and it has increased voter participation. Although in 2020, Democrats garnered a significant advantage from mail-in voting, the 2024 election saw a more level playing field, due in large part to Charlie Kirk’s national Turning Point Action project and regional initiatives.

There is an alternative, less controversial approach the president might want to consider: taking steps to improve the security of remote voting to a tolerable level.

Voter Identity Theft

Individuals obtaining mail-in ballots by impersonating registered voters is one area that requires attention. For example, some states will send out ballots, no questions asked, to a requested address that differs from the voter’s address of record, even to voters presenting as inactive in the registration rolls. Clearly, such a loose process significantly lowers the bar for vote fraud, including by facilitating voter identity theft.

It is not difficult to mitigate this risk, such as by implementing specific requirements for verifying the voter’s identity and current residency status, while at the same time keeping voter rolls as clean and up-to-date as possible. Also, statistical metrics can be used to monitor for systematic vote fraud involving requests for mail-in ballots from faux voters. For instance, how many ballot applications may be originating from voters with differing addresses of record requesting the same mailing address?

Cyberthreats to Ballot Distribution Processes

The multiple paths that mail ballots must travel, from the initial ballot application through printing and distribution to return and recording of a completed ballot, imply multiple potential portals for disruption or attack by malevolent actors.

A risk assessment issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in July 2020 highlights such risks. For instance, as noted by CISA, an attack on a voter’s mailing address in the mail ballot request list could result in failure to receive a ballot or at least delayed.

These risks can be mitigated by ensuring that best practice protections applied to voter registration databases are extended to mail-in voting infrastructure, including to distribution lists. Also, ballot turnaround times and cumulative return rates can be monitored for early warning of potential breaches.

Such risks are not merely hypothetical, as demonstrated by analysis of data from Pennsylvania’s 2020 Presidential Election, as described in my recently published book The Big Flip. These data show that among voters who had applied for a ballot before September 15, Republicans were more than twice as likely to end up with an unreturned ballot compared to Democrats. Not only that, but ballots returned by Republicans on average took three days longer in transit compared to those returned by Democrats (within this application date cohort).

These non-return and turnaround time disparities combine into strong circumstantial evidence, in my opinion, that digitally stored addresses may have been tampered with, causing ballots to be lost or delayed in transit. Others are free to disagree with that assessment, but the following conclusions seem unavoidable: risk controls were inadequate; suspicious patterns went unnoticed; and the failure to detect and investigate such patterns can undermine trust.

Ballot Application Harvesting Activities

The limits on the harvesting (collection and delivery) of mail ballots or on the harvesting (third-party distribution and collection) of ballot applications vary by state. Even where legal, there is a risk that harvesting activities can cross a line into questionable or prohibited types of behavior, including voter coercion or intimidation.

For example, in states that permit application harvesting, it may be permissible for a labor union to distribute ballot applications to its members, even while endorsing a specific candidate. But would it be permissible for the union to single out and distribute applications only to those members who are affiliated with that candidate’s party? That could conceivably violate IRS or other regulations governing the union’s activities.

Common sense dictates that no state should allow unrestricted ballot harvesting. Likewise, states that permit application harvesting should have policies and procedures in place to guard against impermissible tactics or behavior. A national conversation about best practice guardrails to prevent abuses is long overdue.

To sum up, the president is right to be worried about the integrity of mail-in voting. But eliminating the mail-in voting option will likely be a difficult sell to Congress and the public, given the conveniences it offers and its success in broadening voter participation. As a first step, the administration should initiate a comprehensive examination, possibly via a non-partisan task force, of the risks currently associated with mail-in voting and whether and how these can be adequately managed and mitigated.

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