Introducing Universal Mail-in Voting (UVM) leads to a remarkable increase in the number of votes being cast, studies suggest, potentially fueling conservative suspicions that sending millions of ballots out to voters as standard leads to votes being cast illegitimately.
California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington currently use universal mail-in voting for elections, with California and Nevada having adopted the system ahead of the 2020 election, supposedly in response to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
A soon-to-be-published research paper by Washington State University’s Michael Ritter suggests UVM increases registered voter turnout – or at least the number of votes being cast on behalf of registered voters – by eight points.
A previous paper by Eric McGhee and Jennifer Paluch of the Public Policy Institute of California and Mindy Romero of the University of Southern California, published last year, suggested UVM boosted the number of votes by a more modest but still significant 5.6 points in 2020, while a paper published by the Democrat-aligned Pantheon Analytics data firm in 2018 suggested UVM states see five to seven percent more votes cast than non-UVM states.
While the study authors claim this is a great thing, increasing turnout among black, Latino, and younger voters, mail-in voting at scale has long been criticized by Donald Trump and America First conservatives as a potential source of election fraud, with the systems in place to verify ballots are being cast by the right people lacking, and signature verification often inadequate.
To believe that Maricopa County successfully verified more than 400,000 ballots would mean that they would have had to verify signatures in 3 seconds or less.
While working OT.
Watch this video.
Are they treating the integrity of your vote with the respect it deserves? pic.twitter.com/66jO2SGuQq
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) May 17, 2023