Sean Carroll: Mail-in voting makes sense, and it works

I’ve just received by mail-in ballot for the April 23 primary election, and I’m excited to take a look at the choices and cast my votes. Having the opportunity to send my votes on a mail-in ballot is convenient, safe and legitimate.

With my actual live ballot in hand, I have weeks, in the privacy of my own home, to take the time I need to review my choices, research the candidates and issues, and make my final votes. I plan to sit down with my 9-year-old, look at my ballot together and discuss our leadership options, and why I made the votes I did. We usually walk together to drop my ballot in the mailbox on our corner.

I won’t be out of state on Election Day, and I’m not physically incapable of making it to the polling location, but since all Pittsburgh Public Schools are closed on Election Day, I’ll have to take a day off work to care for my two young children, and getting them to the polling location is an actual hassle.

Despite sharing and discussing my votes with my family, only I will mark the ballot, stuff the envelope, sign and date the declaration, and deposit it in the corner mailbox. As a U.S. citizen since birth, I’m entitled to my votes, and I take the process seriously and consciously, with utmost care paid to the rules and requirements. My fellow Pennsylvania voters should expect this of me and other mail-in ballot voters. Obviously, I want my lawfully cast votes counted.

It may surprise people to learn that roughly 58 million people (or 17% of the U.S. population) live in states that conduct all-mail elections, including California, Colorado, Utah, Hawaii, Oregon, Nevada, Vermont and Washington, D.C. There are essentially no physical polling locations in any of those states, and all registered voters receive a live ballot in the mail, whether they want to vote or not. The state of Oregon had conducted all-mail elections in this way for 24 years. An additional 27 states, including Pennsylvania, have “no-excuse mail-in ballot” voting.

Rampant election fraud has not happened or blossomed. If it has, no one has produced any evidence in a court of law that would come anywhere close enough to change the result of any election held recently.

The ability to cast my votes on a “no excuse mail-in ballot” in Pennsylvania was only recently codified by legislation passed by Pennsylvania General Assembly — Act 77 of 2019 — albeit at a time when both houses of the Legislature were controlled by the Republican Party. While the bill creating universal mail-in balloting had bipartisan support, it was largely approved by votes from Republican members, including the most recent Republican nominee for governor, Sen. Doug Mastriano, and then-House Majority Leader Rep. Bryan Cutler, who described the bill as “the most comprehensive effort to modernize and improve Pennsylvania’s elections since the 1930s.” Indeed, what a gift to busy but conscientious, well-meaning Pennsylvania voters.

Five years later though, for whatever reason, the same Republicans are against the law they passed and supported in 2019. During the 2022 campaign, just three years after they legislated it into being, Mastriano and Republicans in the Legislature ran on repealing by any means necessary the part of Act 77 they don’t like — mail-in ballots. Their policy positions in 2022, including this one, were clearly not popular (I certainly did not support them) — Mastriano lost his race for governor by almost 15% (a landslide loss) and the Republicans lost control of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for the first time in over a decade.

Nevertheless, Republicans and their supporters in the state describe the votes on my mail-in ballot as “fraudulent” and “illegitimate.” Current Republican efforts include the outlawing of mail-in ballots and disqualification (on negligible technicalities) of votes made consciously by American citizens on mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. These activities by Republicans are illegitimate disenfranchisement and represent actual voter fraud and vote tampering. If you are dissatisfied with election results, it’s not because of voter fraud, it’s because your candidates’ policy positions are unpopular.

The votes on my mail-in ballot are legitimate. Count them up, fair and square.