Expand and protect ability to vote by mail

The justifications for opposing vote-by-mail elections — especially amid continuing concerns about how long stay-at-home orders will remain in place or whether they might return this fall during the coronavirus pandemic — continue to fall away, like chad from an old-school paper-punch ballot.

President Trump prompted headlines — and discomfort among some fellow Republicans — last month when he was asked about measures to ensure voters’ ballots could be cast and counted during the pandemic, including vote-by-mail, early voting and same-day voter registration.

Where some Republicans have opposed such measures by casting them — without proof — as invitations to voter fraud, Trump was blunt — transparent, even — regarding his problem with making voting more accessible, even during a pandemic: “(I)f you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” he said during an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” repeating the conventional wisdom that increased voter turnout favors Democratic candidates.

However, Trump and others opposed to vote-by-mail because of a perceived advantage for Democratic Party candidates need not worry. There simply is no partisan advantage for either party by allowing voters — as the president now does himself with an absentee ballot for his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, address — to vote at home and mail in their ballots.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-expand-and-protect-ability-to-vote-by-mail/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=ea1ef15c31-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-ea1ef15c31-228635337