Talk:Postal voting

Untitled
Does the article need a description on how postal voting actually works? I could describe the Swiss procedures, where hardly anyone goes to the polling station... (but voter participation is as low as 25-40%, although). Regards, --Keimzelle 12:23, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

We should merge with vote-by-mail
This article and vote-by-mail (which is what postal voting is called in Oregon) are on the same subject. We should merge them into one article.--Clipdude 18:02, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Many US states now allow postal voting
This page is grossly incorrect. I voted by post in NC in the last two Presidential elections. The page should be updated or deleted, it's probably a decade out-of-date. It the worst Wikipedia page I have ever seen. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.67.6.14 (talk) 17:03, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Nope
Sorry, absentee balloting is not synonymous with voting by mail. Absentee balloting is not necessarily done by mail. It can be done in person or remotely via the internet. On the other hand, voting by mail can be "early voting" and not absentee at all. If you want to elaborate on both articles to greater show the differences, I encourage that. - Electiontechnology 03:44, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm confused
The above exchange seems strange - I'm wondering if a move/rename occurred after Electiontechnology's comment. Seems to me that there are three similar phrases: The first two are synonymous and have been merged, correctly. Right? The third seems to be a separate subject. -Pete 23:32, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * postal voting
 * vote-by-mail
 * absentee ballotting

I thought the statement "...and can result in considerable cost savings to taxpayers" seemed politically charged and not neutral, so I removed it. I think the reader can figure out whether there are cost savings by the more neutral statement "This process eliminates the requirements to staff and run a polling center during an election." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.14.68.8 (talk) 14:59, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Turnout
The claim that mail-in balloting in Oregon has produced higher voter turnout is not supported by the citation, which links to an opinion piece written by Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury published in the Washington Post.

Please see a summary of research conducted by Curtis Gans of American University's Committee for the Study of the American Electorate online at http://www.american.edu/ia/cfer/research/csae_09132004.pdf and note this finding (p. 4):

"The evidence is that all-mail balloting in Oregon has not helped and probably hurt turnout and for perhaps the same reason — diffusion of mobilization." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Damn_Sexy (talk • contribs) 21:35, 15 November 2006.


 * I have removed the phrase ", and increased voter turn-out" since it is not supported by the citation. See my preceding comments. Damn Sexy 19:04, 30 March 2007 (UTC)Damn_Sexy


 * The claim in the article "There is some evidence that this method of voting leads to higher turnout than one where people vote in person or have to apply for a postal vote" has no citation. If anyone knows of any evidence to back up this claim, please provide it in the form of a citation. Damn Sexy (talk) 20:38, 12 December 2008 (UTC)Damn_Sexy


 * Thank you for your suggestion. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the  link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills.  New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). Katr67 (talk) 00:48, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Switzerland
I find it quite arbitrary to include Switzerland and no other European country. Switzerland is neither very big nor of any special importance to English speaking people. There are many European countries where postal votes have been used for many years. Germany is one of them (since 1957, "Briefwahl" in German), used for all kinds of elections. --77.181.251.136 (talk) 08:36, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

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Semi-protected edit request on 31 August 2020 - Analysis for USA
Please add:

"An exhaustive investigative journalism analysis of all known voter fraud cases nationwide identified only 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud from 2000 to 2012. 491 in literally billions of votes cast. Ref.: Analysis: The False Narrative of Vote-by-Mail Fraud

and


 * "The rate of ballot fraud: somewhere between 0.00004% and 0.0009%" Ref.:

Cheers. --93.211.223.218 (talk) 16:34, 31 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Literally ❌. Besides the soul-crushing use of "literally", it's not clear what changes you want to make (specifically where this should be added).  More importantly, the sources are muddling these figures, and it's not clear exactly what was measured.  I don't think this can be used.  –Deacon Vorbis (carbon &bull; videos) 17:20, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion : add a section about fraud in postal voting
I would suggest to add a section explaining how fraud can happen in postal voting :

link : https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political-insider-explains-voter-fraud-with-mail-in-ballots/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2788:766:1AA4:A999:6DB9:4E64:5FF5 (talk) 21:39, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Relevant split discussion
Talk:Postal voting in the United States. --David Tornheim (talk) 22:22, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Postal Voting wrt Secret Ballot, needs clarification and balance (hold on proposed new section)
Update: While I remain convinced that a proper treatment of the fraud/secrecy issues deserves a separate section, I can see that arriving at acceptable language and sources will take some significant work, so I'm putting that proposal on hold and will focus on mitigating the bias in the final lead paragraph (new topic below, shortly). It would be wonderful if someone else wanted to take on drafting a whole new section, and I'd be happy to contribute to that, but can't drive it immediately. Rtminner (talk) 17:57, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

The current lead implies that Postal Voting is somehow compatible with the idea of a Secret Ballot, including a direct link to Secret Ballot where it says (emphasis added):


 * Electoral laws typically stipulate a series of checks to protect against voter fraud and allow for the integrity and secrecy of the submitted ballot to be maintained.

I find this misleading, biased, unsourced, and frankly hard to understand. There appears to be some confusion about "secrecy" versus the concept of the "secret ballot" as a system. While it is true that a postal ballot could be filled out "in secret", that is not a "secret ballot". Even a cursory reading of Secret Ballot shows that the point is to ensure anonymity, with, in particular, "Provisions ... to prevent anyone from linking voter to ballot." This is done to prevent, or at least complicate, attempts to coerce or buy specific votes, for if a voter cannot prove how they voted such attempts are thwarted. I will not belabor the point, since it is well explained on the Secret Ballot page, with may references.

Postal Voting (with a single mailed ballot) simply cannot provide protections to the voter to prevent linking ballot to voter, because the ballot itself is not monitored during the process. For example, I live in California, where for my ballot to be counted requires only my signature on the envelope. If someone were to threaten my family and demand I sign the envelope and hand over the blank ballot, I would be inclined to comply. Similarly, if I were poor enough or cared little enough about the election, I could easily sell my signed envelope and blank ballot. Each of these events would be felonies, to be sure, but each would also be extremely difficult to detect. Moreover, this is not a theoretical concern only, as such things have most certainly occurred in many places and many times.

The current lead strongly implies that concerns over fraud (which includes coercion and bribery) are misplaced, with what I consider to be weak and indirect support. This is a case where absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Such concerns should not be lightly dismissed if wikipedia is to maintain NPOV here. This is going to be critical in about a week's time, we can be sure. As things stand, I think we can expect loud (and I think legitimate) charges of overt bias against wikipedia here.

I suggest that the contentious details around fraud and "secrecy" be removed from the lead, with only a statement that it is, in fact, contentious and complex, and a new section be added to present the subtleties more thoroughly and carefully (with, of course, proper sourcing). I would be happy to write a draft proposal for such section, but would like to see comments and discussion here first. Lastly, I apologize for coming to this issue late in the current electoral game. My hope is that it is not too late to stave off some of the coming ugliness. Rtminner (talk) 21:31, 25 October 2020 (UTC)


 * This comment includes personal hypotheticals, but no actual sources. We cannot either add or remove content, based on individual editors' personal hypotheticals, anecdotes, or speculation. Rather, we make our content decisions based on what high-quality sources have to say directly about the topic. If you have some content to propose based on sources, then you can go ahead and propose it. The content you recently added was quite properly removed, as it was clearly WP:OR/WP:SYNTH (it largely cobbled together content cited to a dictionary definition and an Encyclopedia Britannica entry to make a claim not supported by either source). Neutralitytalk 03:53, 26 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I raised a concern about the current lead text, which clearly implies that Postal Voting is somehow compatible with the Secret Ballot and provides no source whatsoever. It seems by your assessment it should be removed, or sourced, yes? I will add clarify with comment for now, and work on properly sourced material as you suggest. I disagree with your assessment of WP:OR/WP:SYNTH, and will note that the exact same text and references appear in Secret Ballot. I was attempting to clarify what is already apparent to anyone following the reference to that page, but I see now nothing is so simple. Rtminner (talk) 04:54, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * (corrected wrt Citation Needed vs. Clarify)
 * P.S. There is no need to point out that my comments here are unsourced, as this is Talk. I have clarified above where I wrote "present the subtleties more thoroughly and carefully" that proper sourcing should be assumed.
 * Here is a primary, and recent, source that pretty well explains all of the concerns and points I would like included in the page. Before I begin drafting text, are there any issues with this source? https://theconversation.com/voting-by-mail-is-convenient-but-not-always-secret-144716 Rtminner (talk) 05:19, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Poland?
I think Poland is categorized wrongly. There is postal voting, but not for all people. I found this: https://sip.lex.pl/akty-prawne/dzu-dziennik-ustaw/kodeks-wyborczy-17679859/dz-1-roz-6-a - it is enabled for people with disabilities / in quarantine / over 60 years old. Asfanwald (talk) 09:20, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

mail-in ballot on MIB (disambiguation)?
Opinions, please: Is https://elections.maryland.gov/elections/2022/general_results/county_status_page_root.html a reliable source for claiming MIB is an abbreviation for mail-in ballot, and is that tidbit notable enough to include in this article in order to satisfy the Manual_of_Style/Disambiguation_pages guideline? (i'm more confident that EV for Early Voting and EN for Election Night are uncommon abbreviations the webpage only uses to condense the chart, rather than items we should add to those disambiguation/pages.)

i apologize if this topic appears more than once; twice, i have used the "Publish" link and gotten a pop-up notification saying "New topic added" or whatever, and yet my topic was not on the page or in the page's edit history. Maybe i'm an unnamed user from an IP address and therefore not allowed to post links to sites besides Wikipedia and Wiktionary?

--173.67.42.107 (talk) 05:42, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

"Pull off"
In the first section of the article there is this: "Coordinated, large-scale fraud by postal voting is likely hard to pull off undetected because the large number of interested parties"

Does anyone else think that "pull off" is too vernacular? I think something like "achieve" or "successfully commit" would be better. 73.240.55.117 (talk) 00:04, 14 November 2022 (UTC)Marcus