Q&A of the Day – How Secure Are Vote By Mail Ballots?
Each day I’ll feature a listener question that’s been submitted by one of these methods.
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Today’s entry: @brianmuddradio Drop box fires across the country. Ballots falling off of a truck in Dade. Isn’t this why people shouldn’t be voting by mail unless they can help it? How many of those votes are gone with voters who will never know if their votes were counted?
Bottom Line: It just wouldn’t be an election cycle in South Florida if everything was seamless, would it? While Florida has gone from being exhibit “A” of how not to run elections, due to persistent failures primarily in Broward and Palm Beach County historically, to the example of how every state in country runs elections in recent years – we’ve just seen again that human error can still play a role in creating election integrity questions. But what’s occurred with reports of arson at drop box locations in various locations across the country, and what happened Monday night in Miami-Dade aren’t both related to vote by mail ballots.
So yes, Monday evening in Cutler Bay, a box of ballots was found in the road near the South Dade Government Center. As we came to learn the ballots weren’t vote by mail ballots but rather paper copies of early votes that had already been tabulated. Under Florida law each ballot is to have a paper backup that can be counted in the event of a recount. The election worker, who since has been fired, was transporting the paper backups from an early voting location to the government building when they fell off his truck.
As Miami Dade Supervisor of Elections Christina White said: Those ballots were already tabulated so those actually become the backup record for the election. The results have already been captured. So I want any voter that voted at that location to know that their votes are already in the system. They will be uploaded on election night and they should feel confident in the overall system. So that incident didn’t involve vote by mail ballots as is the case with the drop box arson issues in other states. But about the broader point of vote by mail ballot safety and best practices.
First, here’s a look at what the options are for all Florida voters casting a vote by mail ballot:
- Mail it in
- Drop it off at a drop box at a Supervisor’s of Elections office
- Drop it off at a drop box at early voting sites or at your precinct on Election Day
Obviously dropping off a ballot eliminates one of the potential points of failure. As for tracking your ballot. The Florida Division of Elections website has a feature which allows you to track your vote by mail ballot. It is possible to ensure your vote is tabulated if you choose to track it. I’d recommend anyone voting by mail to so do. And that takes us to the point being made today about not voting by mail unless one doesn’t have another option. You’re on to something.
The fact remains it’s still best to vote in person, whether that’s early or on Election Day. A study conducted several years ago by the ACLU found mailed in ballots were ten times less likely to be tabulated than votes cast in person (predominantly due to errors made by voters, like not signing a ballot or mismatched signatures, etc.). In total, an average of 1% of vote by mail ballots historically haven’t been tabulated because they didn’t arrive to election supervisors in time or because of the user errors that can come up. That’s a big number of votes that’s commonly totaled over 20,000 ballots – or larger than the winning margin in some statewide contests historically – let alone the potential impact in local elections.
So yes, the best practice is to vote in person when possible. But for those who need to vote by mail, the best practice is to track a ballot’s status online to ensure that it’s tabulated. As we’re now only five days away from Election Day the USPS has already recommended ballots having been mailed prior to today. If you have a vote by mail ballot and you haven’t mailed it yet, you can take it with you to your voting location, have it canceled and vote in person.