Making it easier to vote does not threaten election integrity

  As state legislators consider hundreds of bills on election policies this spring, false claims of voter fraud are being repeated as justification for proposals to claw back recent advances that have made voting easier for Americans.

  In debates about election policy, making it easier to vote and election integrity are frequently presented as opposing goals. Increasing one, it is argued, means decreasing the other.

6 ways mail-in ballots are protected from fraud

  Voter fraud is very rare whether people vote in person or by mail. That much is clear from a large body of research.

  One of us is a political scientist at the University of Washington, and the other is a former elections commissioner who now studies voting laws. We can explain why voter fraud is so rare – especially for mail-in ballots, which have drawn both the interest and concern of many people this year.

Mail-in voting does not cause fraud, but judges are buying the GOP’s argument that it does

  The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee filed lawsuits recently against New Jersey and Nevada to prevent expansive vote-by-mail efforts in those states.

  These high-profile lawsuits make the same argument that Republicans have made in many lesser-known lawsuits that were filed around the country during the primary season. In all of these lawsuits, Republicans argue that voting by mail perpetuates fraud – an argument President Donald Trump makes daily on various media platforms.

Trump’s war on the Postal Service hurts all Americans

  Donald Trump has declared war on the U.S. Postal Service in order to make it harder for people to vote by mail. The pandemic has placed financial strains on the post office—and when coupled with a 2006 law requiring the Postal Service to pre-fund retirees’ health care benefits, a requirement that exists for no other public or private entity, it is no surprise that the Postal Service is facing significant economic burdens. Yet Trump has repeatedly refused to provide it with the necessary funding to continue effective operations, noting that “they need that money in order to make the Postal Service work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots.”

Craig Ford: You should consider voting absentee this summer

  The Republican and Democratic Primary Runoff Elections are still scheduled to take place on July 14th, and many voters are understandably concerned about trying to vote while Alabama is seeing record numbers of new cases of the coronavirus.

  Part of Alabama’s recent spike in cases of COVID-19 is the result of Memorial Day events where large crowds gathered together, and it only stands to reason that forcing large crowds together again in just a few short weeks for this election could create yet another spike.