I think it’s good to summarize discussions so I’m going to summarize the one on mail-in voting. There are some random links at the end; I wasn’t good at saving them during my “research.” It seems to me like the main opposition to mail-in voting is voter fraud, and I understand the concern. Mail-in voting does open up some other avenues for voter fraud, but some states have had exclusive mail-in voting for some time. Oregon has been doing so since 1996 and watches closely for fraud and has not had a problem with it. It seems both parties (in Oregon) agree on that. However, some have noted that Oregon has had two decades to refine the system, but they had to start at some point.
I can certainly understand people’s concerns about voter fraud, and I can see how mail-in voting could open up some other avenues for it. Thus, the trade-off appears to be the risk of additional voter fraud versus making voting easier and increasing “turn out.” I suspect where you land on that trade-off depends greatly on how much of a problem you think voter fraud is. While there are certainly cases of voter fraud my research has shown that it occurs on both sides; there are zealots on both sides willing to risk a lot to make their voice count extra. However, every study I found suggested these zealots are very very rare.
There was also some discussion of voter fraud by the officials tasked with collecting and counting ballots. I suppose mail-in voting could give these officials more of an opportunity to destroy votes. However, we should have a pretty good system in place for preventing that by having representatives from all parties involved. We’ve had centuries of dealing with officials collecting votes and often counting them by hand.
The biggest concern seemed to be of dead people voting, and I’m sure there are people on both sides willing to risk doing this. However, it seems like this should be easy to catch simply by keeping voter registration databases up-to-date and cross-checking with databases of those that have died. There’s seems to be a lot of discussion about some voter registration databases including thousands of dead people because they have not been updated in years. I’m sure this is likely true, but there doesn’t seem to be any correlation with additional voter fraud in these precincts. When there have been systematic checks there are usually initially surprising numbers of dead people voting. However, in every case I saw, all of these were false positives with people having the same name, clerical error, or someone having mailed in a vote before they died.
There was also some worry of non-residents and “illegals” voting but they would have to do so in someone else’s name since they would not be in any voter registration database. It seems like where you stand on possibly allowing non-residents to vote depends on who you think they’ll vote for. There was also some discussion of Democrats pushing for non-residents being allowed to vote and there have been some places that have allowed this for local elections. There seems to be no explicit push from either side to allow non-residents to vote. An interesting fact I discovered doing a little research on this is that most state constitutions initially allowed non-residents to vote but, of course, did not allow women to vote. Many just required a man to simply have resided in the state for some period (usually a few months) to vote. Others simply said that any man wishing to become a resident could vote. I had not known this and it surprises me somewhat. However, thinking about it a little, I suspect that there was very much less animosity towards immigrants and non-residents at the time because so many people had themselves or close relatives been immigrants. This attitude shifted in the late 1800s and early 1900s and now no state (at least at a state level) allows non-residents to vote. Again, I suspect this has a lot to do with the majority of people during this period not having had themselves or close relatives immigrate to this county.
In the end, I think people’s stance depends on which side they think these fraudulent ballots will be cast, and who is being hampered from voting by having to go to a polling place. There’s no shortage of Republican politicians saying (admitting) that high voter turnout is not good for them. There is also no shortage of Democrats saying the opposite. It appears that the research and election results do strongly suggest this. I suspect no one is surprised by it. Thus, I think people should consider if the strength of their stance on mail-in voting has a lot to do with the party they want to win an election.
I feel that making it convenient to vote strongly outweighs whatever additional fraud might occur. I honestly think what little fraud there is probably has the same prevalence on both sides and likely cancels out in the end. However, I have to admit that I suspect that if the candidate I wanted to win was going to be hurt by mail-in voting I might feel differently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_foreigners_to_vote_in_the_United_States
https://www.spatzlawfirm.com/blog/2018/11/what-happens-when-you-commit-voting-fraud.shtml