Editorials: Trump is wrong about the dangers of absentee ballots | Richard L. Hasen/The Washington Post
President Trump has recently come out against expanding voting by mail, despite the fact that he regularly votes by mail himself. He tweeted that it has “Tremendous potential for voter fraud and, for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.” Given that expanded mail-in voting is going to be an inevitable piece of the November election because of the coronavirus pandemic, it is important that Americans understand what risks come from voting by mail and what can be done about those risks before November, so that voters can have confidence that the election can be fairly conducted, in part, through mail-in balloting. To begin with, election fraud has been rare in this country for decades. Impersonation fraud, where one person shows up at the polling place claiming to be a voter who died or moved, is practically nonexistent, yet it has formed the excuse for some Republican-led states to pass strict voter-identification laws that many Democrats believe are motivated by a desire to deter their likely voters.