There is considerable debate over the election safety of mail-in ballots. But a less focused on element of mail-in ballots are the high number of ballots that get thrown out. Greenwich Connecticut’s Registrar of Voters, Fred DeCarlo, recently posted some data from Connecticut’s recent Presidential primary. Connecticut’s Democratic Governor sent an absentee ballot request to every registered voter. As a result, a significant number of registered voters requested ballots.
DeCarlo revealed that in Greenwich CT over 33% of the primary ballots were not returned. Moreover, of the ballots that were returned, 5% were unable to be counted because of voter error in completing the ballot. Greenwich, CT is an affluent, highly educated town so it is notable that 5% of the voters incorrectly filled the ballots out. The figure is multiples of the percentage of ballots that are thrown out for in-person voting.
The implications of the higher than normal voter error for mail-in ballots suggests that in a close race, the candidate whose voters decide to vote by mail will be at a disadvantage. Unless voting by mail leads to higher turnout generally, the 5% error rate could result in a disadvantage for Democratic candidates. The error rate for Republicans and Democrats was virtually the same. However, surveys suggest that a much higher percentage of Democrats plan to vote by mail. Some Republican strategists are concerned that Republican voters, particularly older voters, may simply not turn out and that Democrats may do better by pushing early voting by mail and get higher turnout, despite the higher error rate. Still, putting all other issues aside, if turnout is held constant, it’s much better to vote by person, rather than to vote by mail. In a close election, this could give the Republican candidates a small edge over the Democratic candidates.
NewEnglandPolitics.com 