In an election that has often been beset by bizareness, one of the more extreme conspiracies floating around has been that postal voting is inherently corrupt.  It’s prompted accusations that Donald Trump is hobbling the postal service, so sure is he that postal voting disadvantages the Republican party.

New research from Brigham Young University highlights the nonsensical nature of this conspiracy theory.  The researchers analyzed over 40 million individual voting records, and found that postal voting doesn’t appear to provide an advantage to any particular party.

The researchers analyzed voting patterns in areas where postal voting had been implemented for federal elections.  The analysis revealed that while postal voting did indeed increase voter turnout by up to 3%, it didn’t have any real impact on the outcome of the elections.

Postal reliability

The study is one of the first to use nationwide data to explore how postal voting shapes elections.  The analysis took place over three decades in counties that had utilized mandatory postal voting.  This included counties in Colorado, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Nebraska and California.  The researchers explored voter records before and after the system was implemented.

In total, this included over 40 million voting records across elections for the House, Senate, governorships and presidency.  It’s perhaps unsurprising that postal voting coincided with a rise in voter turnout because it affords greater convenience than in-person voting.  It also gives voters plenty of time to research the candidates before casting their vote.

Given the hullabaloo  around the reliability of postal voting, however, the most important finding is that it doesn’t seem to favor one party over the other.

“There are beliefs—I think incorrect beliefs—that voters who favor the Democratic Party tend to be less motivated to turn out to vote, so if you make it easier to vote you’ll get more of that group. It turns out not to be the case,” the researchers explain.

“We have elections in all sorts of really crazy circumstances—we even had presidential elections in the middle of the Civil War. Vote-by-mail is one way we can have a fair and secure election in 2020 without putting voters at significant health risks. I would hope that people see this as a public policy that could really benefit our country right now.”