Mail-In Voting Is An Essential Part Of America's History, Present and Future
“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must either be a beast or a god.” -Aristotle
Mail-in voting is somewhat of an American tradition. It is, at this time in history, simply a matter of, “everything old” being “new again.” This is a matter of history and common sense as much as of technological and practical boundaries for people and democracy.
Today, the postal service and its services are largely taken for granted often. There is always talk of privatizing it - like seemingly everything else - talk about how it is expensive and could be done better without the government’s involvement and arguments of that ilk. Yet in the days before near-instant communication and information availability, the postal services of the nation meant so much to a person and community. It was one’s telephone, newspaper, and magazine source, instant messenger and email, parcel delivery service, as well as - sometimes - a vehicle of the people’s democratic will at the polls, at least for soldiers at first.
And how could it not be? Telegraphs and the necessary infrastructure to allow for train tracks are just over and under 200 years old each. Automotive vehicles are over 100 years old, yes, but their widespread ownership is significantly younger - relatively speaking; telephones are over 100 years old too, but - again - their widespread use occurs later on in their story than one might expect. The internet is still only about 30 years old at the time of this essay.
Hence, unless one lived in a major voting center, or lived close enough to one to ride a horse to - while also having the time with which to do so - there were few alternative recourses to allow for the voting franchise to be exercised. Even with the voting population being noticeably smaller without anyone other than white men, travel time and select postal assistance across the years had to allow for that smaller group to do their business; for soldiers, of course, there were literally no other options than to utilize the latter.
Consequently - and certainly worth understanding in regards to both this paradigm and American democracy across the early decades - election day, or the first Tuesday of November - was actually only chosen in 1845. Prior to that, the greater election period for civilians and soldiers alike often lasted weeks to accommodate travel, mail, and whatever other recourses were legal and possible at the time. When they were held, elections in locations were, however, usually held on either one day or across two.
This national period - ranging for 34 days from 1792 to 1840 in some elections - was wholly necessary to ensure that everyone and every state across the vast - albeit, considerably smaller - nation was able to cast their vote in one way or another. This time was dependent on when all the participating states and territories had their own elections scheduled for; there was, again, until 1845, no mandate that the election process be done on the same day or even the same week as any other municipality or state.
Innovations are always the simple product of a shared reality that must be dealt with and overcome in some manner - whether for the miltary or for the public. While mail-in voting for select military personnel had been witnessed across the country’s history to alleviate certain logistical and practical problems, by 1896 in Vermont, civilians were the first members of the public to also be granted mail-in voting privileges.
Without fast travel and communication, data sharing, and the like - and with the time to decide them longer, as well as the number of months between the Presidential election and when the new president takes office - elections and the entire, associated set of processes obviously took longer, and civilian postal voting surely aided - at that moment and in the time since - to the growing spirit of democracy which would continue ballooning across the 20th and 21st centuries.
As an aside, this latter point regarding the time between election and inauguration would, however, be remedied following the election of 1932 - thanks to the Twentieth Amendment. The time has since been reduced to the less time-consuming period ranging from the first Tuesday of November to the end of January - instead of until the start of March.
Mail-in voting - where and when it has existed for both civilians and soldiers down the years - has always allowed and benefited those out of the country or in the most rural communities, who did not - and still do not - always have easy access to polling locations. Dating back years, decades, and across the more than a century and a half since their more commonly cited widespread American introduction, it was always an obvious and readily-available solution to choose - even though it wasn’t always chosen.
But, even in a world without uncoordinated voting structures and with all of our modern amenities and luxuries, mail-in voting continues to serve the practical purposes of each and every participating member of the society and democratic process. While that should be all the people of this great society and nation, it is not currently; hell, it is even less than it should be, in part because in certain circumstances. And, for some people, voting is simply difficult.
It could and might be organically difficult - i.e. difficult family schedule, difficult work schedule, practical condition, etc. - or it could be artificially difficult - i.e. no or few polling places in the available locations, strange laws, etc. - but regardless, these difficulties are either intolerable, or they make voting more a task than a civil and social obligation.
To appraise it a different way for a moment - however - one might well say that all of the difficulties are of the artificial variety when it is understood that many a voter - civilian and military - across the nearly 250-year history of the United States has voted by mail; the ability was even pushed for by the highly-esteemed President Abraham Lincoln! It is really no big issue at all!
When political parties of states or of political parties in the federal government make a stink about mail-in voting as though it is unsafe, or more easily manipulated, stolen or cheated in some way, they are preying upon fears on the one hand, while giving far too little context with the other.
There have been tricky moments in and across American history, of course. The election of 1876 and its aftermath come to mind quickly, as does the 1948 Texas Senatorial election of Representative Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas over former Texas Governor and then-living legend Coke Stevenson; yet in both of these noted elections, mail-in voting played no major nor minor part in either story.
The censorship of the United States Postal Service across large swaths of its existence is worth noting, as it is likely the most abhorrent thing that that institution can be said to have done over its lifetime - better than many others mind you. But this censorship did not include vote stealing or siphoning - unless one includes preventing certain political magazines and publications from going to certain places, or else tailing those who sent or received the contraband afterward.
In any event, large-scale, successful voter fraud by mail or otherwise has never been caught, witnessed or experienced in this country. One would imagine that this is because it is nearly impossible to coordinate or do in substantial enough numbers to be worth attempting or - for the cynics out there - noticing. It is - therefore - a largely made-up qualm designed to provide a more plausible reason to make voting more difficult than receiving bills and bank statements, state and federal documents, etc., than simply that “we want it harder.”
Even after trains and vehicles were known, even after the telegraph and the telephone existed, mail-in voting certainly had a place in this country. In the 1930s in this nation, there were places that still lacked electricity and plumbing; as famed Author Robert Caro discusses during his LBJ biography series, these folks were in places where the private entities who ran these services didn’t think it would profitable to go into - and so they didn’t go into them until the government forced them to.
And that would explain why, during the run-up to the 1924 Presidential Election, President Calvin Coolidge was photographed voting for himself by mail while at the White House. It was both necessary and normal in certain places across the American nation.
And it was considered safe to do at a time where, technically, it likely wasn’t actually safer than now; it was not strictly a partisan issue either, although racists did do their best - as always - to limit the voting franchise. Calvin Coolidge - the man famous for stopping the great Boston Police Strike of 1919 that occurred during the First World War - was no bleeding heart nor a Keynesian economic enthusiast, let alone anything more liberal or left than either of those casually illustrate.
To have the most participants in a democratic election should always be the goal of all democratic nations - to whatever degree. While the United States does not make voting mandatory like it is in Brazil, creating easy access to voting allows for the people of every political persuasion to vote should they feel their interests represented by one or more of the candidates.
The only conceivable reason a political party at this juncture in history - any party, anywhere - would not want easy access to voting, either registration or the practical process, is because they genuinely suspect that more people voting means a lesser chance of that ideology or party winning. All things being equal as it regards confidence in potential electoral turnout, political parties should be as enthused as the participants to ensure that everyone can vote without much fuss.
When a political party is not enthused about this - whether in the United States, or anywhere else - it is because that party is decaying. It is trying to maintain a power through the constituents it has which it knows are already registered and ready to vote for them, while disenfranchising other groups - whether differentiated by age, culture, ethnicity, ideology, or combinations of them each - under the ruse of election integrity.
If nations like Canada, Germany, South Korea, and a good host of other nations across the world manage to conduct fair, balanced, untampered elections with the help of their respective postal services, why would the United States - a nation so often argued to be “exceptional” - be the strange exception in this instance? Surely that is not what those who use that language imagine when they conjure the image up in speech or dialogue?
No. The United States should and must make mail-in voting widespread. There are states which are taking the lead like California, Oregon, Vermont and others; more states will likely follow once certain ideological and political groups embrace the tradition instead of fighting it, and eventually, one can imagine the federal government looking at it as well. One cannot know how far away that day is from the present day, but until it arrives, it must be understood that any positive mail-in voting innovation is simply a return to the past in so many ways; mail-in voting helps to enfranchise more people, and that- in the final analysis - is a part of the democratic process in itself.