There’s a big push for mail-in voting in the US presidential election, but it will lead to chaos, allegations of fraud and worse

Citing Covid-19, the Democrats want ballots to be sent in by post. The problem is that the mailing service can't be trusted – especially when the postal unions support Joe Biden.

It's understandable that many people are worried about the upcoming American election. It's not as if that doesn’t come around every four years, but the political games this time are further complicated by a pandemic. 

As such, there has been a push towards using mail-in ballots for the election. This has brought about a lot of discussion – not just about worries of corrupt practice, but of blatant partisanship. For the uninitiated, the United States Postal Service union has endorsed Joe Biden for president.

However, potential voter fraud – as alleged in this case in New Jersey – is only part of the scenario. It is certainly a possibility, but there are more prevalent problems we see within modern society that render the possible practice of a mail-in election as something completely idiotic. Especially once you consider all of the past mistakes that have been made by the postal service and in the shipping of ballots. 

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For a humorous example, a family in Georgia reported that one ballot was sent to them for a dearly departed loved one: a cat. Last I checked, though many of us Americans consider pets to be part of the family, felines don't get to vote. If they could, there would be a portion of the federal budget devoted to catnip.

All jokes aside, there was another instance where Maryland received a bunch of absentee ballots that were for South Carolina. Because of this mistake, there was an entire county in South Carolina that just didn't get to vote. In recent primaries (small scale exercises compared to the general election), some 65,000 people were disenfranchised because their ballots arrived too late. Now imagine tens of millions of voting papers going out to the entire country. There is such a substantial margin for chaotic error that it's kind of scary.

This is of particular importance when it looks like the election is heading down to the wire and may be decided by a few thousand votes here and there. Remember that Trump took Michigan in 2016 by just 10,700 votes, and Wisconsin by 22,000, while Hillary Clinton won New Hampshire by just 2,701 and Main by 19,995. That’s fewer votes than went missing in the recent primaries.

Trump is adamantly against mail-in ballots – he says it would be “catastrophic,” and the postal service itself admits millions of votes might be misplaced – but the Democrats, and their postal service union buddies, are pushing for them, warning that Covid-19 might be spread as people queue to vote. 

But people are already able to go to places where they are in fairly close contact with one another. In fact, you can go to the grocery store and end up in a line where you are just as close to people as you would be when you're going to vote. This is where my dilemma comes in. So if I'm picking up materials for cheeseburgers and a case of hard cider, then proximity isn't that much of an issue. But if I vote, heaven forbid I get close to anyone. It makes me wonder where their true priorities are.

This is where the issue lies, in my opinion. There's no actual consideration of the world that we live in. Could there be substantial fraud with a mail-in election? Certainly. Might there be accidental loss of ballots? Yes. 

The fact of the matter is that neither the postal service nor the government can really be trusted to get the ballots where they need to go. Plus, the regulations put in place don't make any sense; if I can go pick up groceries once a week in person and stand in line, I can stand in line to vote in person. Just have someone check people for masks, and maintain social distancing, and we will all be fine.

If an election is as important as we say it is, the voting needs to be in person. Otherwise, it's just going to end up being another joke, alongside the rest of the silliness in 2020. But one with severe political implications. What happens if it's as close as 2016 and hundreds of thousands of votes have gone missing? The potential for chaos and acrimony looms large.

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