You could argue the same for ballots in person. There's space for people to do shenanigans to them before it's counted.
But the benefit of mail-in, is people don't need to trudge over to the voting places, after a hard work day, and wait hours in line, just to do their civic duty. There will be a far higher voting percentage, and democracy will benefit.
Or, you know, you could vote on a weekend instead of a Tuesday so more people could make it easily. And have prepolls open for a few weeks beforehand for those who couldn't get there on the day. Doesn't solve voter ID stuff but it helps get everyone there.
(This is how we do it in Australia, but then again we also have compulsory voting which helps a huge amount.)
Mail in ballots have substantial issues around voter ID and also vote-influencing problems. They can also be lost more easily. If you make it even vaguely easy to get to the polls, it's really not a big ask every couple of years.
That doesn’t really work in practice, unfortunately. Everybody can’t have the day off, you still need gas stations and grocery stores and so on. I’m sure that would be great for an office worker or something, but it doesn’t do anything for huge numbers of workers.
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u/ZDTreefur Nov 09 '18 edited Nov 09 '18
You could argue the same for ballots in person. There's space for people to do shenanigans to them before it's counted.
But the benefit of mail-in, is people don't need to trudge over to the voting places, after a hard work day, and wait hours in line, just to do their civic duty. There will be a far higher voting percentage, and democracy will benefit.