Special Edition: Voting by Mail – What to Know Now

Erica Mandy (0:00)

Today is Saturday, September 12th. The general midterm election is now less than two months away, and in some places, mail ballots are already going out. But at the same time, there's an ongoing legal fight over whether new federal rules for mail ballots can take effect before November. The Trump administration has proposed changes that supporters say will strengthen election integrity, but some election officials and other critics say the changes are problematic and too close to election day. At last check, a federal appeals court kept a block on those new rules, meaning they could not be enforced for now. But the Trump administration has also asked the Supreme Court to weigh in. Well, in the meantime, we're hoping to provide some clarity. Our guest today is Wren Orey, Director of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Elections Project, where their work focuses on evidence-based reforms to help make elections secure, accessible, and trustworthy. We talk about the role of mail ballots, the controversies surrounding them, what the new rules would actually do, and of course, what voters need to know before November.

Welcome to The NewsWorthy Special Edition Saturday, when we sit down with a different expert or celebrity every Saturday to talk about something in the news. Don't forget to tune in every Monday through Friday for our regular episodes, where we provide all the day's news in less than 15 minutes. I'm Erica Mandy. It's now time for today's special edition Saturday.

Wren Orey, thank you so much for joining us here on The NewsWorthy.

Wren Orey (1:21)

Thanks for having me.

Erica Mandy (1:23)

Well, let's just first establish what mail-in voting actually is and how it's evolved in recent years to get to where things are now.

Wren Orey (1:30)

Absolutely. So there are really three types of voting options. The first is the traditional voting option that you are most used to. So that is in-person voting on election day, you're at a voting site casting your ballot. The second is in-person voting ahead of election day. And then the third is voting by mail. Historically speaking, most voters have cast their ballots on election day. And over the last 10, 20 years, we've seen gradual increases in the rates of voting ahead of election day, and by mail really picked up during the pandemic.

Erica Mandy (2:01)

Right. For obvious reasons, people weren't going in person, and so this became an alternative. So what are you seeing when it comes to the breakdown of states? Because some, I live in California, it's all mail-in.

Wren Orey (2:12)

We have about seven states around the country, including states like California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado, who actually mail a ballot to every single eligible voter ahead of the election, even if they didn't request one. You get a ballot in the mail, you get to fill it out at home and send it back. Those states tend to see higher rates of mail voting contrary to other states where they might have a different setup. Maybe you have to request that mail ballot ahead of time.

And then the other setup is you have to request the ballot ahead of time, but you have to provide an excuse. So maybe you're over 65, so you have an accessibility accommodation. Maybe you're going to be out of town on election day, so you're eligible to request a mail ballot.

Erica Mandy (2:53)

And is there any meaningful difference between saying absentee ballot and mail-in ballot?

Wren Orey (2:58)

Great question. No, generally speaking, they're interchangeable. Elections are uniquely decentralized, so every state and locality runs elections a little differently. That means they use different terms. I like to think of absentee voting as when you're having to take an extra step to request that mail ballot, and all mail elections are when everyone is getting sent to mail ballots. That's one way you might distinguish them, but by and large, most people's purposes, the terms are interchangeable.

Erica Mandy (3:26)

President Trump has raised a lot of concerns about mail-in voting, specifically about potential fraud. What do you make of that?

Wren Orey (3:32)

We have seen no evidence to indicate that mail-in voting is rife with fraud or any of these other concerns that have been leveraged against it. If anything, I see a lot of arguments from election officials that mail-in voting is a very secure method of casting a ballot. Only eligible voters receive that mail ballot. So that's a voter who is registered, who has proven their eligibility, their name and address is on file with the election office, they get that mail ballot, they fill it out, and then when they send it back, they usually have to verify their identity in some way. So the most common way that voters around the country prove to their election official that their ballot is theirs is by signing their name on their ballot envelope, and then the election office compares that against the signature they have on record.