This week, it was reported that former Trump political advisor Steve Bannon interviewed a self-described “Pennsylvania Election Fraud Watchdog” who made two baseless claims about no-excuse mail-in voting in Pennsylvania.
“Nobody else in the world uses this system,” she said. “Because it has multiple vectors for fraud.”
First, nine other countries offer no-excuse mail-in voting of different degrees: Canada, Germany, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, S. Korea, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
There are some that say there is little proof that mail-in votes make elections less secure. Since no-excuse mail-in voting was signed into law in 2019, just five Pennsylvania voters have been convicted of using them to commit fraud – at least three were registered Republicans.
Mail voting (also known as absentee voting) was first used during the Civil War as a way for allow soldiers to vote. Its usage has risen since the 1980s and surged during the COVID-19 pandemic and all states offer at least some form of mail voting. The AP reported that there was little widespread fraud detected during the 2022 midterm elections anywhere in the country.
Now the truth…. Voting by mail can trace its roots to soldiers voting far from home during the Civil War and World War II. By the late 1800s, some states were extending absentee ballots to civilian voters under certain conditions, but it wasn’t until 2000 that Oregon became the first state to move to an all-mail voting system.
What Does the Constitution Say About Voting?
There is no step-by-step guide to voting in the United States Constitution. Article 1, Section 4 says that it’s up to each state to determine “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections.” This openness has enabled the voting process in the United States to evolve as the country’s needs have changed.
The Founding Fathers voted by raising their voices—literally. Until the early 19th century, all eligible voters cast their “Viva Voce” (voice vote) in public. While the number of people eligible to vote in that era was low and primarily composed of land-owning white males, turnout hovered around 85 percent, largely due to enticing voting parties held at polling stations.
The first paper ballots appeared in the early 19th century and were originally blank pieces of paper. By the mid-1800s, they had gone to the other extreme: political parties printed tickets with the names of every candidate pre-filled along party lines. It wasn’t until 1888 that New York and Massachusetts became the first states to adopt pre-printed ballots with the names of all candidates (a style called the “Australian ballot” after where it was created). By then, another revolution in voting had taken place: Absentee voting.
The first widespread instance of absentee voting in the United States was during the Civil War. The logistics of a wartime election were daunting: “We cannot have free government without elections,” President Abraham Lincoln told a crowd outside the White House in 1864, “and if the rebellion could force us to forgo, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.”
“Lincoln was concerned about the outcome of the midterm elections,” says Bob Stein, Director of the Center for Civic Leadership at Rice University. “Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, pointed out that there were a lot of Union soldiers who couldn’t vote, so the president encouraged states to permit them to cast their ballots from the field.” (There was some precedent for Lincoln’s wish; Pennsylvania became the first state to offer absentee voting for soldiers during the War of 1812.)
In the 1864 presidential election between Lincoln and George McClellan, 19 Union states changed their laws to allow soldiers to vote absentee. Some states permitted soldiers to name a proxy to vote for them back home while others created polling sites in the camps themselves. Approximately 150,000 out of one million soldiers (15%) voted in the election, and Lincoln carried a whopping 78 percent of the military vote.
The question still stands…. were the states coerced by the Lincoln admin to make those changes or was it free will.
