A common complaint by right-wing politicians is that postal voting is inherently insecure and has a much higher risk of interference. A recent study from Towson University suggests that those allegations have little basis to them.
The study looked at the use of postal voting during the pandemic and found that it not only increased voter access but also actually reduced the likelihood of adversarial interference.
Increasing access
The researchers explain that Covid resulted in nearly all US states expanding their use of postal voting, leading many to raise concerns about the security of elections. They examined whether this was true by looking at the potential attack methods identified in 2009 by the Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) and the University of South Alabama, which broadly categorize possible attacks as either insider threats, external threats, or voter error.
They used Maryland as a case study to explore whether these attacks were happening, and even whether new kinds of attacks had emerged during the pandemic. Indeed, they identified 30 types of new threats to the security of postal voting across the three general categories, bringing the total to 73.
The research found that the most likely threat scenarios were losing a ballot in the destination mailroom, organized coercion via debate and vote parties, and the failure by voters to sign the ballot correctly.
“To fully secure the integrity of mail-based votes, these scenarios should have the attention of election officials and policymakers,” the researchers say.
To mitigate these risks, the authors make a number of recommendations, including ensuring that mailrooms are sufficiently staffed to handle the rise in ballots and also their timely delivery. They’re also at pains to point out that while they did identify 30 new threats, none were believed to be of high concern.
“What we found in our study is that the dramatic scale-up of mail voting in the 2020 election did not increase risk,” they conclude. “We argue that expanding mail voting is safe and should be used moving forward because it increases voter access and reduces the likelihood of adversarial interference.”
