Mail-in voting

Mail-in voting “is when a voter completes their ballot at home and mails it in or drops it off at a designated drop site (in available states). Depending on the state, other terms such as absentee voting, advanced voting by mail, voting by mail-in ballot, or voting at home may be used to describe this process,” according to Rock the Vote. [1]

United States mail-in voting laws

Mail-voting procedures vary considerably across the United States. Each state, along with Washington, D.C., and the U.S. territories, establishes its own rules for voter registration, absentee voting, ballot distribution, and ballot counting. Mail-in voting laws fall into one of three categories:

1. Universal mail-in voting: In eight states and D.C. every registered voter is automatically mailed a ballot and may vote by mail. In D.C. a voter needs to request an absentee ballot only if they plan to be away from the D.C. area during the election period. In Vermont ballots are only automatically mailed for general elections.
2. No excuse required: In 29 states and the Northern Mariana Islands any registered voter may request a mail-in ballot without providing an excuse. [2]
3. Excuse required: In 13 states and four territories (American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) a registered voter may request a mail-in ballot only if they have an eligible excuse. The accepted reasons vary according to jurisdiction but frequently include disability, caretaking obligations, or employment duties. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

Congress has authority to regulate certain aspects of federal elections and has enacted laws governing issues such as voting by military personnel and citizens living overseas. U.S. federal law—specifically the 1986 Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act—requires that all U.S. jurisdictions allow absentee voting for members of the United States Uniformed Services (which includes the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Coast Guard, Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps) and the merchant marine, their family members, and other U.S. citizens living abroad. Depending on the jurisdiction, these voters may return their ballots via fax, email, secure web portal, or physical (“snail”) mail. [8]

History of absentee and mail-in voting

Absentee voting in the United States dates at least to the 17th century, when “men whose homes were vulnerable to Indian attack were permitted to vote without leaving their abodes” in Massachusetts, according to historian Alex Keyssar. During the American Revolutionary War (1775–83), Continental Army soldiers requested the ability and were allowed to vote absentee in a Hollis, New Hampshire, local election “as if the men were present themselves.” Pennsylvania allowed soldiers to vote by mail in 1813 during the War of 1812 (1812–15) if they were more than two miles away from home. And Oregon passed a law in 1857 that allowed all men who were temporarily away from home to vote absentee. In some cases the men would vote via proxy (sending another man to the polls in his stead). [9] [10]

A few other localized examples existed, but absentee voting wasn’t adopted more widely until just before the American Civil War (1861–65). As the Southern states began to secede from the Union, each adopted a new constitution. In seven of the 11 Confederate states (all but Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi), the constitutions or other legal provisions allowed soldiers to vote from the battlefield. In fact, North Carolina and Tennessee allowed soldiers to vote from the battlefield before the two states had even seceded. [11]

Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens were first elected provisional (temporary) president and vice president, respectively, of the Confederacy in February 1861, via the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States, not by popular vote. Davis and Stephens ran unopposed for the first and only Confederate presidential election on November 6, 1861, and were elected to six-year terms. In that general election Confederate states also voted for senators and representatives to the Confederate Congress. [12] [13] [14]

The Union followed suit with absentee voting for soldiers during the 1864 presidential election between incumbent Abraham Lincoln and George B. McClellan, when 18 of the 25 Union states allowed soldiers to vote while deployed: Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin. Just after the election, in 1865, Illinois would allow absentee voting. Some of these states—including Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia—implemented mail-in voting and sent soldiers pre-printed ballots and return envelopes. In other cases, soldiers voted in person from military camps and hospitals. [11] [15] [16]

After the end of the Civil War several states allowed some non-military citizens to vote by mail, including Kansas (1901, for railroad employees) and Virginia (1916, for absences due to business obligations). Other states enacted absentee voting measures that did not include voting by mail. [17]

Mail-in voting once again expanded to accommodate soldiers deployed during World War I (1914–18), during which mailboxes on bases were turned into ballot boxes. One surviving 1918 election return envelope is stamped with the text “Soldiers’ Ballot Voted By Mail – Official Return Envelope for Absent Voter” and cost three cents to mail. [18]

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Notably, in 1924, Pres. Calvin Coolidge and first lady Grace Coolidge prepared mail-in ballots on the White House lawn, a process that required the pair to take an oath and state that they met absentee voter requirements per the law in their home state of Massachusetts. The 1924 election was only the second time Grace and other women could legally vote in a presidential election (the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920, just ahead of that year’s presidential election). Coolidge—the incumbent—defeated opponent John W. Davis. [17]

World War II (1939–45) saw the federal government experimenting with federal (instead of state) ballots and states strengthening their military voting laws. Furthermore, in the 1942 and 1944 presidential elections, some Japanese Americans incarcerated in government camps were allowed to vote by mail depending on the laws of their home states. However, due to the conditions of their imprisonment, many Japanese Americans had limited knowledge of the issues and candidates. Plus, xenophobic groups interfered in the election by challenging ballots sent in with names that seemed Japanese. [17] [19] [20]

Between World War II and the Korean War (1950–53), many state absentee voting laws expired. This led states to pass new, more permanent laws so that by the late 1960s, all states had some form of absentee voting. The federal government passed the Federal Voting Assistance Act (1955), which allowed spouses and other family members of military personnel overseas to vote absentee, and the Overseas Citizens Voting Rights Act (1975), which allowed all Americans overseas to vote absentee. [19]

In the 1960s and ’70s states began reducing length-of-residency requirements for voting in a new home state, an idea that was bolstered by the Voting Rights Act of 1970. Furthermore, with the ratification of the Twenty-sixth Amendment in 1971, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, provisions were made for college students to vote absentee, as some state laws disallowed them from voting from college addresses. [19]

Until 1978 all absentee voting, including via mail, required an excuse, but that year California passed the first no-excuse absentee voting law, which allowed all California residents to vote absentee without providing a reason. In the following two decades, many states implemented no-excuse absentee ballots and eliminated rules requiring witnesses or notarization. [19]

In the 1980s and ’90s, Oregon pioneered the universal mail-in ballot system, in which all residents are automatically mailed an absentee voter ballot to return by mail, to a ballot box, or in person at a polling place. In 1998 Oregon’s citizens voted to have all future elections use this system, which was then officially implemented in 2000. [1] [19]

Many states expanded mail-in voting eligibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, and about 43 percent of voters cast their 2020 election ballots via mail. [10]

As of June 2026 eight states and D.C. have implemented universal mail-in ballots. All other states and territories allow voting by mail if a ballot is requested (29 states and one territory without an excuse and 13 states and four territories with an excuse). [3]

The myth of rampant voter fraud

The idea that voter fraud is widespread and will only increase with any form of absentee voting has existed since at least the 19th century. American Battlefield Trust noted that “conspiracy theories ran wild that voting fraud would be rampant through the methods of allowing soldiers to vote” absentee during the 1864 election. And yet, during that election, just one voter-fraud plot was uncovered, and the trickery was easily thwarted. Furthermore, the conspiracy would have only impacted soldiers’ votes in one district in New York, which wasn’t election-changing. [21] [22] [23]

Researchers at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank, summarize the research on voter fraud:

Several prior analyses have found that mail voting fraud is extremely rare, though exact percentages differ slightly based on the years or cases reviewed. A piece in The Hill in 2020 drawing from the Heritage Foundation’s database found that only about 0.00006% of total votes cast were fraudulent mail votes over the preceding 20 years. Other analyses have looked at a subset of states that have transitioned to universal vote-by-mail. The New York Times reported that states that have universal vote-by-mail voting systems see “essentially zero fraud.” Specifically, they found that Oregon has seen only about a dozen documented cases of fraud since switching to a universal vote-by-mail voting system in 2000. A study conducted by the American Statistical Association found “no evidence that voting by mail increases the risk of voter fraud overall,” and estimated that Washington state would have likely seen around 80 more cases of fraud between 2011 and 2019 had it not transitioned to a universal vote-by-mail voting system. [24]

Research also indicates that mail-in voting does not offer an advantage to one party over another. [25] [26] [27] [28]

Furthermore, Americans broadly approve of mail-in voting, with 59 percent saying mail-in voting should be an option. An overwhelming 67 percent of voters living in universal mail-in states believe no-excuse absentee voting should be available, and 59 percent of those who live in no-excuse states say the same, as do 53 percent of those who vote in excuse-required states. [29]

International mail-in voting

Globally, International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization (IGO) that supports democracy, counted 31 countries that allow mail-in voting for some or all voters in addition to the United States: Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Canada, Fiji, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Ireland, Japan, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Poland, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe. [30]

Discussion questions

1. Should mail-in voting be widely available to all voters? Why or why not?
2. Should mail-in voting be restricted to a group of “eligible” voters? Who should be included in “eligible voters”? Explain your reasoning.
3. Consider the various methods of voting and rank them from best to worst. Explain your rankings.
4. What questions do you have after reading the debate above? Where might you find answers?
5. What was the most interesting thing you learned from this debate?
6. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways in which your better understanding of the other side of the issue now helps you better argue your position.
7. Push for the position and policies you support by writing U.S. senators and representatives.