Mail-In Voting Explained: Are the American Presidential Elections Secure?

For the past few months, mail-in ballots have been a hot topic in the United States, but one thing that is clear is that nobody seems to know exactly what they are. For America to progress, and for division to be resolved, people need to know what they are arguing about. People throw around buzzwords without bothering to define them. Here, definitions for one of the hottest topics in the U.S. will be provided so you are more well-informed in your daily discussions about U.S. federal elections.

In any normal year, an American election will usually operate with an in-person voting system. The way this works is that a U.S. citizen 18 or older can register to vote before an election. When registering, they will receive a voter registration card. With this card, the voter is now eligible to vote, but they cannot vote just yet. On the registration card, there will also be a polling place listed. For elections, people can vote at many different locations, referred to as polling places, and the registration card will list the polling place that the voter is registered to use. They can then fill out their ballot in a private area within the polling location and submit it to be counted.

Something unique about the American system is that it is not a popular vote, but rather an electoral college. The reasoning for the electoral college is to balance the interests of small states and large states. If it were a popular vote, large states would hold all of the power and small states would be neglected because large states have different issues and concerns than smaller states. The electoral college balances these interests and keeps smaller states from being overlooked in federal elections. Many may take issue with this system because it allows a president to win the election, but only win a minority of the votes. However, this is the way the founding fathers intended the system to work because it requires a president to appeal to many people across many locations, rather than just picking a few big states and only appealing to their issues. In each federal election, there are a total of 538 electoral votes, and a candidate is required to reach 270 of those votes to win an election.

Now that we know what it takes to win an election, what is changing this year? This year there is a large push to use the United States Postal Service to mail ballots to people, and then retrieve the ballots as well. These ballots are referred to as mail-in ballots. This is a hot topic in the United States right now, due to an argument over how the mail-in ballot system should operate. There are four kinds of ballots to quickly review. First, there is the absentee ballot. With this ballot a voter can request a vote by mail, proxy voting, voting online, or from a different location if they are unable or unwilling to vote at their registered polling place. The second kind of ballot is an in-person ballot. This is the ballot that was reviewed earlier where someone will vote at a polling place. The third and fourth kinds of ballots are mail-in ballots, which are relatively new to the American system. The first kind of mail-in ballot will be used in 35 states, requiring a registered voter to request a ballot before it is sent out. In an additional 6 states, the voting will be the same, but a voter must provide a reason to receive a ballot in the mail. In the remaining 9 states, Utah, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, California, New Jersey, Vermont, Nevada, and Hawaii, all eligible voters are sent a ballot without needing to request one. Of these states, Colorado seems to have the most comprehensive measures with two layers of signature verification, and a tracking system for the votes, which the other states do not have.

With this information in mind, I hope that this clarifies the American system of voting and can define certain terms when people discuss American elections. It is extremely important to know the definitions of what we discuss, and that is something that we often lack in America. People throw around buzzwords without defining them, and that creates division. When these buzzwords are defined people can then form concrete opinions about something like the electoral college or mail-in ballots. This is especially dangerous in America because every state is running its election completely differently. A state like Colorado has made an effort to make their election as secure as possible, to an extent that states like Hawaii or California do not reach, despite them both having the same system. The United States can better itself, and dissolve unneeded conflict by providing definitions to the buzzwords that they support or are against. This article is hopefully one step in the right direction of providing people with the facts needed to discuss American elections.