Thread by @RetroReport

1/ Today President Trump suggested that the November election should be postponed because he thinks, despite a lack of evidence, that mail-in voting would lead to a fraudulent election. #voting #VBM

The US has a long history of voting by mail. #LessonsFromHistory.

2/ During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln and his fellow Republicans wanted Union soldiers to be able to vote in the 1864 election from the battleground. “I would rather be defeated with the soldier vote behind me than to be elected without it.” Lincoln said.

3/ Democrats weren’t happy. They thought letting soldiers vote by mail was a scheme to help the Republicans win. In the end, 3/4 of soldiers who voted cast their ballot for Lincoln, although there's evidence that many were pressured to choose him. opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/how…

4/ During WWII, the 1942 Soldier Voting Act enabled troops to vote by mail. At the time, a Gallup poll found the race between Roosevelt and Dewey was close. Both parties believed soldiers would vote for the Democrat, FDR. This time it was the Republicans who objected.

5/ Today, mail-in voting isn’t uncommon. In the 2016 federal election, nearly 21% of voters cast their vote by mail. According to @voteathome, more than 250 million ballots have been cast by mail since 2000.

6/ For the 2020 election, many states are expanding access to absentee voting due to concerns about coronavirus. 76% of Americans will be able to vote by mail. Only 9 states (CT, NY, IN, KY, LA, MS, SC,TX, WV) require a valid excuse.

7/ Given how much you’re hearing about voting by mail leading to fraud, you might think voters are cheating. But election officials from CO, OR and WA, which have held statewide mail elections for a combined four decades, said they have rarely, if ever, seen cheating.

8/ An analysis by @WPost and the Electronic Registration Information Center found "372 possible cases of double voting or voting on behalf of deceased people out of about 14.6 million votes cast by mail in the 2016 and 2018 general elections, or 0.0025 percent." @ericstates_info

9/ In 2018 in NC, it was a GOP operative, not voters, who tampered with absentee ballots to help the Republican candidate. The election results were thrown out. npr.org/2019/07/30/746…

10/ A bigger problem than fraud in mail-in voting appears to be rejected ballots-- ballots that arrive past the deadline, or have signature discrepancies or other errors.

11/ Recently, in the presidential primary in FL, 18,500 late ballots weren’t counted. In NV, 6,700 votes were rejected because signatures couldn’t be verified. These issues could make a difference, especially in battleground states.
washingtonpost.com/politics/tens-…

12/ A majority of Americans are in favor of absentee voting. A new poll from @pewresearch says 65% of Americans think early voting or “no excuse” mail-in voting should be an option; 33% think it should be allowed with an excuse. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020…

13/ Despite his tweets to the contrary, President Trump favors some mail-in voting. He voted absentee in the 2018 midterms in NY and again in the 2020 FL primary.