Mail-in voting, which has substantially changed results around the country since it was widely implemented in 2020 during the COVID crisis, has been pushed by the Democratic Party for over a decade.
COVID gave several key states the chance to implement mail-in voting, something Democrats at the federal level had been seeking since 2009, when California Democrat Rep. Susan Davis introduced H.R. 1604, the “Universal Right to Vote by Mail Act of 2009. In 1978, California became the first state to permit voters to obtain an absentee ballot without citing a reason.
“No evidence exists suggesting the potential for fraud in absentee balloting is greater than the potential for fraud by any other method of voting,” the bill claimed.
The leftist ACLU chimed in with its support, writing, “This bill would give all voters the choice of voting by mail by eliminating the unnecessary, burdensome, and often intrusive requirements that some states impose on voters requesting absentee ballots.”
At about the same time, a bill titled the “Voting Opportunity and Technology Enhancement Rights Act of 2009” was sponsored by noteworthy leftist House Democrats, including John Conyers of Michigan and Jerrold Nadler of New York.
The bill demanded “a national Federal write-in absentee ballot,” adding, “An otherwise eligible national Federal write-in absentee ballot shall be counted if postmarked or signed before the close of the polls on election day and received by the appropriate State election official on or before the date which is 10 days after the date of the election or the date provided for receipt of absentee ballots under State law, whichever is later.”
That bill contended that “each State shall notify in writing any individual who has been convicted of a criminal offense under the law of that State that such individual has the right to vote in an election for Federal office … the notification required … shall be given on the date on which the individual is sentenced to serve only a term of probation; or is released from the custody of that State …”
The first time mail-large-scale voting occurred in the United States came during the Civil War, when soldiers away from home were permitted to vote by mail. That effort helped secure Republican President Abraham Lincoln’s re-election victory against Democrat General George McLellan.
In the decades that followed, a specific reason for requesting a mail-in ballot was needed in order to obtain one, rather than them being widely available on demand,
Prior to the 2020 COVID pandemic, five states had entirely mail-in elections, according to TIME: Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah.
“Most states still require voters to make a formal request for an absentee ballot,” the leftist Brennan Center reported in September 2020, adding, “This year, however, many of those states took significant steps to make it easier for voters to obtain absentee ballots.”
In late July 2021, former President Trump warned that mail-in voting would lead to “the greatest election disaster in history … This will be catastrophic for our nation. … Everyone knows mail-in ballots are a disaster.”
“It is essential from a health reason because we want to keep people at home to vote without having them all collect on Election Day, but if they do want to vote in person, that we have sufficient spacing and all the rest so it’s not a risk to their health,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi countered.