The 1860s paved the way for remote voting in the U.S., a process that has faced renewed controversy—and popularity—in recent years
During the elections that took place amid the coronavirus pandemic, voters in every state but Mississippi and Texas were allowed to vote by mail or by absentee ballot. But as the election neared, then President Trump ramped up claims that the mail-in system promotes fraudulent voting and favors the Democratic Party.The controversy surrounding mail-in voting has roots in the Civil War. Before then, only the state of Pennsylvania granted soldiers absentee voting rights.
The issue quickly became partisan: Republican candidates supported the cause and appealed to soldiers for their vote, while Democrats feared that Republican military leadership would tamper with the results. They complained of Republican interference and accused them of trying to steal the vote and, as a result, were publicly derided as anti-soldier and watched their popularity drop.
Nine state supreme courts heard challenges to these laws, and in grappling with whether remote voting was constitutional or not, four states struck them down.historian David Collins in a thesis about the wartime effort, “it was the legislature’s responsibility, and within the legislature’s constitutional authority, to subordinate the value of election ‘purity’ to the more important wartime imperative of allowing absent soldiers to vote, no matter the far greater risk of fraud.
By the close of the 1800s, many states had expanded their laws to allow homebound or traveling voters to participate in elections. Today, there are numerous anti-fraud protections built into mail-in balloting, including signature verification, drop boxes in secure locations, and address confirmation.
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