Democrats warn their push for mail-in voting may turn Election Day into ‘Election Week’

2020 has been riddled with one crisis after another—and this one may have disastrous short- and long-term consequences. A push by Democrats for mail-in voting is increasing the chances that Americans will not know the winner of November’s presidential race on election night, a scenario that is fueling concerns from all political persuasions.

State election officials in key battleground states have recently warned that it may take days to count what they expect will be a surge of ballots sent by mail out of concern for safety amid the pandemic. A delayed tally in key states could keep news organizations from calling a winner on election night, and could see a host of court challenges in the days or even weeks to follow.

Michigan Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is calling for patience from Michiganders ahead of time, as experts predict mail-in voting will slow 2020 election results. “It may be several days before we know the outcome of the election,” Benson said in a recent interview. “We have to prepare for that now and accept that reality.” You can watch Benson in the video below:

Delayed results are common in a few states where elections are already conducted largely by mail. But a presidential election hasn’t been left in limbo since 2000, when ballot irregularities in Florida led to weeks of chaos and court fights. Some Democrats are already beginning to push the narrative that President Donald Trump’s disparagement of mail-in voting as being rife for fraud will lead to his claims of a “rigged” election if he isn’t declared the winner.

Some Democratic operatives, lawyers, and even this year’s presidential nominee have grown increasingly vocal with their concerns that President Trump will try to “meddle” in the election. Joe Biden recently said he thinks President Trump may use his office to intervene. “Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” Biden said in April at a virtual fundraiser.

Sound familiar? It doesn’t seem very “progressive” to be using the same preemptive narrative in 2020 that was used four years ago. And does anyone really need reminding of who among us has still not accepted the results of our last presidential election?

In a piece for USA Today, Lanhee J. Chen, fellow in American Policy Studies at the Hoover Institution and the director of Domestic Policy Studies in Public Policy at Stanford University, notes there is little evidence that vote-by- mail significantly expands turnout in federal elections. “All-mail systems face equity concerns because it can be a challenge to get ballots to voters without addresses, or who move often. Increasing access to early voting also raises concerns. Voters who cast their ballots early risk missing critical information that can surface in the closing days of an electoral campaign. Such programs do not appear to increase voter participation meaningfully, and a vast expansion of such programs raises logistical and cost concerns similar to those created by the move to increase voting by mail,” Chen writes.

Chen also notes that while citizens in a few states, such as Oregon, are prepared to vote in all of their elections by mail, about half of the states do not have vote-by-mail as a limited or widely available option. “In those states where vote-by-mail is widely used, infrastructure likely already exists to mail out printed ballots, and then process voted ballots in an efficient and secure manner. Oregon has been an all-mail state since 2000, giving it 20 years to work out the kinks. It’s unlikely that states with no or limited vote-by-mail history would be able to effectively stand up to necessary procedures and facilities before the November general election,” Chen adds.

A 2005 bipartisan electoral reform commission concluded that vote-by-mail programs create “concerns about privacy, as citizens voting from home may come under pressure to vote for certain candidates” and, perhaps more significantly, increase the “risk of fraud.” Furthermore, the federal Election Assistance Commission reports that between 2012 and 2018, 28.3 million mail-in ballots remain unaccounted for. The missing ballots amount to one in every five of all absentee ballots and ballots mailed to voters residing in states that do elections exclusively by mail.

Considering this data, as well as the issues highlighted by Chen, President Trump’s concerns about an abrupt shift to mail-in voting in a matter of mere months appear warranted—and every American who supports free and fair elections should be just as concerned.

The nation is seeing unprecedented measures imposed on us during an election year. In the past three months, Americans have been forced into lockdown because of a virus the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently concluded has the same mortality rate as pandemic flu. This virus scare and resultant edicts issued by elected officials at the state and local levels have rendered tens of millions unemployed in what was, immediately preceding, one of the most thriving economies the nation has ever known. More American families have been driven into poverty and have had little recourse to prevent that. Democrat-run states have seen some of the strictest lockdown policies, and thus have allowed even greater negative economic consequences impact their citizens.

Our country has more recently been subjected to nationwide protests and riots during which thousands of people have amassed with no regard whatsoever for those “social distancing” measures officials have mandated. Many of the same governors who were arresting barbers and salon owners for continuing to run their businesses during the ordered lockdowns are now refusing to even prosecute protestors and rioters who violate social distancing/stay-at-home orders (among other laws). Perhaps even more perplexing, we’ve had “health experts” recently come out in support of these protests, saying that not protesting —even if it increases the spread of the virus we were all force-fed to believe would annihilate most of us if we didn’t stay in our homes for months— is somehow a failure in our civic duty as Americans because, all of a sudden, systemic racism is now the crisis de jour following the tragic and untimely death of one man while in police custody.

The collateral damage related to measures enacted “because of the virus” and that sustained from recent protests and riots have impacted Democratic-run states and cities most severely. Why? Because their policies, as a whole, are abject failures. Now they’re determined to change laws and implement policies that will impact the integrity of not only the 2020 elections, but those to follow.

Liberia had a successful election in 2014 despite an Ebola epidemic. Wisconsin also held an election without problems earlier this year, as did South Korea, all amid the current pandemic. Coronavirus numbers are declining daily in the United States, and we still have five months to go before we will be casting votes this election cycle. Top health officials are also now largely retracting their earlier projections on the issue of a “second wave.”

The biggest way to expand voter fraud is to expand voting by mail. Clearly, if we are now allowing thousands of people to gather in massive groups for the purpose of protesting and rioting, we can allow Americans to get to the polling stations in November.

To today’s Democrats, the ends justify the means. They believe that President Trump is so terrible and evil, anything they do to win —even locking us into our homes for months, praising riots and mass destruction of our cities, and pushing a method of voting in which problems are ubiquitous— is justified. They’re counting on it, in fact.