LANSING, MI — With the pandemic in full swing and Michigan fully in quarantine in late March, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson decided to do something never been done before:
She mailed an absentee ballot application to everyone eligible to vote in local elections held May 5. Only a small minority of residents –barely 10 percent — had elections that day. Most of the places that did had only small millage and school elections.
Nobody paid much attention. But when the results came in, they were eye-opening. Turnout, while small, was twice what it normally is in these elections. And given a choice between absentee ballot and voting in person, more than 99 percent voted by mail.
Then, on May 19, Benson made a far more momentous decision: She announced that her office would mail absentee ballot applications to every one of Michigan’s 7 .7 million registered voters before both the Aug. 4 and Nov. 3 general elections.
That instantly drew a furious response from President Donald Trump, who tweeted – falsely — that Michigan had sent absentee ballots to the voters. “This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State.”
He also claimed that “I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this voter fraud path.”
Within an hour, Michigan’s secretary of state fired back, tweeting “I also have a name — it’s Jocelyn Benson. And we sent applications, not ballots. Just like my GOP colleagues in Iowa, Georgia, Nebraska and West Virginia.”
Trump soon corrected his tweet to say applications, but still maintains that what the secretary is doing is illegal and that mail voting provides “tremendous potential for voter fraud.”
But is what she is doing illegal?
Does it provide a greater risk of fraud, and – why do Republicans, especially Trump, seem to hate it so much?
First of all, while lawsuits are likely, most experts think sending absentee applications to all voters is probably legal. (It also seems unlikely that President Trump could cut state funding over this.)
Two years ago, Michigan voters amended their state constitution to allow “no-reason” absentee voting. That means anyone who wants an absentee ballot can have one, period.
There’s also reason to believe Secretary Benson knows the law; she is a graduate of Harvard Law School, a former dean of Wayne State University’s law school, and a recognized expert on election law.
But there is no reason to believe voting by mail lends itself to fraud, or makes it easier to cheat. Oregon has conducted all its elections exclusively by mail since 2000. Bill Bradbury, a former Oregon secretary of state, was the co-author with writer Tim Palmer of a column on this issue that ran in several newspapers last week.
“Fraud has been extremely rare and never significant,” they said, adding voting by mail is the safest system because “it leaves a paper trail – a critical feature for exposing fraud.”
“Voting by mail is nonpartisan. Making voting easier, cheaper and safer is good no matter what your affiliation. Studies show no benefit to one side or the other,” they added.
However, Republicans clearly think mail voting benefits the Democrats. President Trump tweeted before the Michigan controversy that voting by mail “doesn’t work out well for Republicans,” and also said on FOX TV that “if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
What is true is that states that vote by mail do have considerably higher turnout, and in most cases, the more people vote, the better Democrats do. Oregon used to be a reliably Republican state; it voted for Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter.
But Oregon hasn’t voted for a GOP candidate for President since Ronald Reagan. Colorado, another of the five states that vote entirely by mail, voted for George W. Bush over John Kerry – but backed Hillary Clinton over Trump four years ago.
However, Utah, another vote-by-mail state, has stayed reliably Republican. There are other advantages to going to an all-mail system as well. Michigan had a 63 percent turnout in 2016; Oregon’s was 80 percent – down from almost 86 percent in 2008.
States, now more cash-strapped than ever, save millions of dollars when they adopt a vote-by-mail system, since they no longer have to staff and fund thousands of polling places. Voters can also cast more responsible ballots by taking time to research complex ballot issues, and look up candidates for less-known jobs.
Plus, in this year like no others, voting by mail means no exposure whatever to the coronavirus that has devastated the nation, and which scientists fear will be back for a second wave in the fall.
Ironically, one of vote-by-mail’s biggest foes uses absentee ballots all the time: Donald Trump. When a reporter for MSNBC confronted him about this, he admitted to voting by mail in both the last election and this year’s Republican primary.
When asked why he did, he said, “because I am allowed to.” The odds are that in this year of the coronavirus, all Michigan voters, and likely many more around the country, will be allowed to as well.
