Thinking about Elections

THE LONG HISTORY OF MAIL-IN VOTING. Absentee voting started during the Civil War to enable soldiers in the field to vote. This voided the requirement of physical presence in a community to vote. (At the time, only white men could vote, and voting was done by publicly announcing your vote, often on the courthouse steps.) By the end of WWI nearly all states allowed men in the military to vote.

The reasoning that allowed soldiers and sailors to vote absentee also applied to those whose jobs required them to be away from home on election day. By 1918, more than 20 states allowed absentee voting for work-related reasons.

Until WWII absentee voting was governed by state law, but in the 1940s Congress passed legislation that federalized and standardized the right to vote absentee and set up mechanisms to distribute ballots overseas and at military bases around the country. (Further federal legislation has strengthen this.) Five million men and women were in the armed forces in WWII.

Federal and state legislation has expanded absentee voting. For example, the 1970 amendments to the Voting Rights Act banned states from requiring more than 30 days residency to register to vote and mandated that when a person has less than 30 days at a new location they can vote absentee based on their previous residence. (Lengthy residency requirements sometimes a year or more—had disenfranchised millions. Even moving across the street triggered the residency requirement to register to vote at the new address.) In the 1980s California was the first state to allow absentee voting for any reason including convenience. In 1998 Oregon was the first to go to all mail-in ballots for elections. Other states have followed the example of California and Oregon.

Two links here:

https://www.nalc.org/news/the-postal-record/2024/september-october-2024/document/Absentee.pdf

https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110938/documents/HHRG-116-JU00-20200728-SD036.pdf