The 2016 election proved the American mail-in system is broken, but little has been done to fix it as the nation approaches the 2020 election while facing the coronavirus. As the Postal Service “imploded with mail-in ballots in 2016,” many Americans question how safe vote-by-mail really is.
According to a study conducted at MIT in coordination with CalTech, 22 percent, or one in five, mail-in ballots never get counted. And of these millions of mail-in ballots not counted, the majority are ballots of low-income young and minority voters registered at Democrats.
“If 20 percent, or even 10 percent, of voters who stood in line on Election Day were turned away, there would be national outrage,” the study said. “The estimates provided by this paper suggest that the equivalent may be happening among voters who seek to cast their ballots by mail, and yet there is nary a comment.”
The study also found that of the millions of absentee ballots, one in nine voters never received their ballot or received it too late, with the late ballots being slow-mailed to Americans of color.
In an interview, Greg Palast investigates the “looming vote by mail crisis that could decide the 2020 election.”
“You can call it a “flawed” system, but it’s a fraud system, American Apartheid,” Palast said.
What is happening and what can Americans do to fix it?
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