Name: How voting by mail could save the US election
Uploaded: 2020-07-31T18:30:05.000Z
Duration: 8 min 32 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

the governor of New York announced that he was delaying his state's April election.

"I don't think it's wise to be bringing a lot of people to one location."

18 other states had already delayed or modified their spring elections.

"It would endanger public health to allow thousands of people to assemble."

But the state of Wisconsin made a different call.

"The only state to move ahead with its election."

"Polls, if you can believe it, are open in Wisconsin this morning."

On April 7, voters in Wisconsin got in line, waited for hours,

with some poll workers in full protective gear.

One voter made a sign that seemed to sum up the situation perfectly:

"People are calling it the photo of the year."

I was sitting with my cardboard in my lap, I was like, “this whole thing is just ridiculous.”

The people who were supposed to be making sure things are safe for us,

I felt like they kind of threw us under the wagon, you know?

The next day, the governor of New Jersey announced they were postponing their election too.

"I don't want a Wisconsin, where folks had to pick

between exercising their right to vote on the one hand, and protecting their own personal health."

Wisconsin's election highlights something that the US really needs to figure out soon.

In November, there's an election to decide the next president.

But it's highly unlikely that Covid-19 will be over and done with by then.

We might even be dealing with a second wave of it.

So, if public gatherings are a health risk,

how are you supposed to have an election?

I'm coming to you from the Roberts family voting booth, here at my dining room table.

This is Dave. He's at home in Seattle, Washington.

Dave's done a lot of reporting on what he says is a simple solution to how America can

Tens of millions of people in America vote by mail now, every election. And it's fine.

Washington is one of the few states that runs its entire election through the mail.

I think I've been voting by mail since I got to Washington in 2000.

Voting by mail basically works by taking two important elements of voting:

Verifying your identity, and filling out the ballot --

And moving them from a polling place, to your home,

where the ballot gets mailed a few weeks before the election.

And that has two really obvious benefits. First:

You have literally weeks to do as much research as you want.

So when you fill that circle, you're like,

And second: Voting by mail takes away a lot of the common reasons people don't vote.

find someone to watch your kids, or take your kids with you,

hope that your name hasn't been struck from some roll for some random reason,

wait for hours, three hours, five hours, in line...

Voting by mail clears those hurdles. And the effects are really easy to see.

In 2018, a county in western Nebraska got permission from the state

while voters in the rest of the state voted the old-fashioned way.

Across Nebraska, voter turnout was 24%. But in that one county, it was more than double that.

Turns out that making it easier to vote, means more people vote.

On average, states with all-mail voting systems have a higher turnout than other states.

A poll from April 2020 found that Americans would overwhelmingly be in favor

of holding the next presidential election entirely by mail.

But that still leaves a chunk who aren't sold on it.

the possibility that your vote might be more likely to get lost, stolen or coerced,

So I asked an expert on voting by mail how serious and common a risk this is.

So I also asked someone who runs elections.

"No widespread or systematic voter fraud."

I asked a political scientist who's an expert on election data.

"It's highly unlikely anyone is going to steal your vote."

"The concerns about voter fraud are way overhyped."

"You are still more likely to be struck by lightning than to find mail ballot fraud."

The reason vote-by-mail fraud is rare is that even though, in theory, it's possible,

It helps to think in terms of "wholesale fraud" vs. "retail fraud."

Election security experts worry about wholesale fraud:

lots and lots of votes being tampered with at once.

So, if a bunch of people are voting on a machine, you just have to hack the one machine,

and you have access to thousands of votes.

Wholesale fraud, with one point of contact.

They're a lot less worried about what they call "retail fraud":

votes that get tampered with one at a time.

I mean, it is possible that someone could come by, and steal your ballot, fill it out,

And they thereby would have accomplished...

But even if that does happen, vote-by-mail systems typically give you a way

to track your vote and make sure it's been counted.

"You can track your ballot like an Amazon package. It does not get much more secure than that."

"You can actually go on our system and track it,

from when they receive it, when they verify the signature, and when it's ready to count.

If they haven't returned that ballot, I guarantee you that the voter picks up the phone

"The checks and balances that are in vote-by-mail...

In California, there are stronger and stricter guidelines on processing vote-by-mail

The same week that Wisconsin held its election, the state of Georgia sent all its voters forms