In a post yesterday about the 2020 presidential election, I argued that the widespread use of mail-in voting during the COVID-19 pandemic distorted the election results because people voted at home rather than at a polling station behind closed doors, where family members and partisan canvassers watched them vote. Voters inevitably felt pressure from family and canvassers that they would not have felt if they had voted at a traditional polling station.
The second problem with voting by mail is that headlines and news are constantly changing. The goal of any election is to capture voter sentiment on Election Day, not Election Month. Every voter needs to have the same national and global context in mind when they cast their ballot.
I do not believe there was any fraud in the vote count or voting machine errors in the 2020 presidential election. Therefore, it was incorrect for me to write that the results of the 2020 mail-in ballots were fraudulent. However, I believe the results of the 2020 election could have been changed by the use of mail-in ballots, which may explain why President Trump lost the 2020 vote count. People who voted at home and had others watching them vote may have felt pressured not to vote for President Trump's reelection.
Going forward, President Trump today is calling on Republicans to invest heavily in mail-in voting, which makes perfect sense if Democrats are going to work on mail-in voting. In the long run, it would be better to go back to the secret ballot and have everyone vote in person on Election Day.
