Vote-by-Mail vs Vote-in-Person vs Absentee Voting

“Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country, because they’re cheaters. They're fraudulent in many cases.” -- Donald Trump commenting in April 2020 without any evidence of voter fraud, a few weeks after he cast his absentee ballot in Florida’s primary

“They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” -- Donald Trump referring to the Democrats’ proposals to expand vote-by-mail in response to the Covid-19 pandemic on Fox & Friends in March 2020

An article in Wired magazine last month, The Weird Partisan Math of Vote-by-Mail, discussed the differences between the two. The article noted that research indicates vote-by-mail doesn’t help Democrats. That raises the question of why Republicans oppose it.

Wired explained the vote-by-mail situation as in three schemes. Seven states use traditional absentee balloting. That requires voters to give a reason why they can’t vote in person. That is the most restrictive scheme. The no-excuse absentee scheme is less restrictive and allows anyone can vote if they request a ballot. That scheme or some variation of it applies to about half of the states. The least restrictive scheme is  universal vote-by-mail. Five states, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, use that scheme. So do many counties in California. Under universal vote-by-mail, state government automatically mails a ballot to every registered voter, and voters then (1) have about two weeks to mail the ballot back, or (2) they can drop it off in person by election day.

Wired comments that the effect of universal vote-by-mail increases voter turnout. Some research indicates that when voting is more convenient, more people vote. Effects of vote-by-mail are complex. Sometimes it favored republicans and sometimes democrats.  Younger people tend to vote more if vote-by-mail is available. A not yet published paper that has been submitted for peer-review draws these conclusions:

We collect data from 1996-2018 on all three U.S. states who implemented universal vote-by-mail in a staggered fashion across counties, allowing us to use a difference-in-differences design at the county level to estimate causal effects. We find that: (1) universal vote-by-mail does not appear to affect either party’s share of turnout; (2) universal vote-by-mail does not appear to increase either party’s vote share; and (3) universal vote-by-mail modestly increases overall average turnout rates, in line with previous estimates. All three conclusions support the conventional wisdom of election administration experts and contradict many popular claims in the media.

Wired interviewed the lead author, Daniel Thompson, who indicated that a small advantage may be present for democrats, but the data is uncertain on that point:

“After they controlled for those trends, the Democratic advantage shrunk to either 0.9 or 1 percent—with a 0.4 or 0.5 percent confidence interval. That is indeed small—but is it really “neutral”? ‘We can’t rule out that there are some small effects,’ said Thompson. ‘But given the level of uncertainty, we can’t even say that the effect is greater than zero with a high degree of confidence.’” (emphasis added)

The situation is just as complicated for states that want to expand absentee voting. In Wisconsin’s primary this year, democrats worked to expand absentee voting and it benefited them. But in Florida, with its long tradition of absentee voting, Republicans constitute a bigger share of absentee votes.

A research article published in 2004 looked at the effect of Oregon’s universal vote-by-mail (VBM) scheme. That analysis indicated that VBM did not change voter any of several voting behaviors very much. The data indicated that Democrats were somewhat less successful at mobilizing their non-voters than Republicans were.

Public opinion generally supports VBM. Recent polling indicated that about 80% of democrats, 64% of independents, and 54% of Republicans support voting by mail. So if one is willing to give weight to public opinion, VBM is an acceptable way to proceed, at least during the pandemic.[1] It doesn't seem likely that widespread VBM and/or absentee voting is likely to have a major effect on election outcomes.

Footnote:

1. My preference is to establish universal, mandatory voting by whatever means the states want. Unexcused non-voting would trigger a progressive tax penalty that increases for voters with higher incomes. Australia has such a mandatory scheme and it works fine there. Some research indicates that mandatory people tends to lead to better-informed voters and voting.

A 2015 research paper commented on the voter knowledge phenomenon:  

“Compulsory voting is assumed to have both primary and secondary effects on citizens' political behaviour. While compulsion increases voter turnout, its effects on political engagement, democratic satisfaction, and electoral advantage are still debated. This study hypothesizes that compulsory voting increases citizens’ political knowledge, either because voters choose to become informed given the requirement to vote, or because the process of voting itself imparts incidental knowledge. It also hypothesized that knowledge is distributed more evenly in compulsory systems. Multivariate analysis of data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (Modules 1 to 4) finds some support for the first hypothesis, and stronger evidence in support of the second hypothesis. These findings inform normative debates on the merits of compulsory voting rules.”