There Is No Evidence That Voting By Mail Gives One Party An Advantage [View all]

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If the coronavirus pandemic rages on, most Americans will probably vote by mail in November. But like most political issues in the U.S., voting by mail is an increasingly partisan affair, with Democrats more likely to support it than Republicans.

The fight over voting by mail isn’t new. But if the political cues around voting by mail weren’t firmly set before, they are now, with President Trump calling voting by mail “corrupt” and pushing Republicans to fight efforts to expand it. And this has many election experts concerned as the partisan fighting, last-minute scrambles and inevitable litigation could make 2020 an even more uncertain election.

But before the political fighting gets too ugly, lawmakers really ought to look at the evidence. Numerous studies have arrived at the same conclusion: Voting by mail doesn’t provide any clear partisan advantage. In fact, as states have expanded their use of mailed ballots over the last decade — including five states that conduct all-mail elections by default — both parties have enjoyed a small but equal increase in turnout.

In short: voting by mail is more convenient for some voters but more difficult for others, and these conflicting factors appear to cancel each other out, dampening any partisan advantage. Moreover, the vast majority of nonvoters don’t participate not because it’s too inconvenient to vote, but because voting isn’t a habit for them. Maybe they don’t care about politics, maybe they don’t think their vote matters, maybe they don’t like any of the candidates, or maybe it’s some combination of all of the above. But the bottom line is that these voters’ decision to vote depends more on whether somebody around them can motivate them to vote, not whether they are able to vote by mail or in person.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-is-no-evidence-that-voting-by-mail-gives-one-party-an-advantage/