Talk:Absentee ballot

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How many absentee ballots are issued to overseas voters?

In 2018, 655,409 ballots sent, 350,000 returned in time to count. Numbersinstitute (talk) 00:29, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps we could start a section about the impact of absentee voting on voter participation? Seth Flaxman (talk) 16:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

There is already such a section at Postal_voting_in_the_United_States#Turnout. Great if you can add to it. Numbersinstitute (talk) 00:29, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm very interested in adding a table to this wikipedia page in order to display information in a more comprehensive, reliable and easy to read format. My proposed table is a first step towards that end. I think this is necessary because absentee voting in the United States is very complicated, every state has different rules and regulations and these rules are constantly changing (it's possible that the map on this page may already be out of date). I would love your feedback on how it could be improved to make it more wiki-worthy and if you would be willing to help me put it together. Seth Flaxman (talk) 16:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent entry. Very useful. I am part of the US Public Policy initiative and my class is looking (and learning) how to edit pages. I am from Massachusetts and would love to research MA's policies on absentee ballots.- Michelle.K.Rico (talk) 23:36, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

There are often two different sets of rules for absentee ballots -- one for domestic and one for overseas including military voters. The Overseas Vote Foundation has lots of great information on the latter. --Bruce Hall (talk) 13:34, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

You're right it would be hard to keep it up to date here. The National Conference of State Legislatures has a lot of tables comparing states, at the bottom of https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/absentee-and-early-voting.aspx Putting any table here would overwhelm the article, which covers the world. It would be better to put any such table at Postal_voting_in_the_United_States#In_states and default it as collapsed, for people to expand when they want to. I noted there the existence of NCSL tables, and you could add more if you wish. Numbersinstitute (talk) 00:29, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

State Rules on Absentee Voting

I collapsed the following table, since it's empty and takes much space on this Talk page. Kim9988 (talk) 21:34, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Empty table of state policies

border="1" cellpadding="5"
State	No Excuse Necessary	Permanent Absentee	URL for Requesting Absentee (if online request is possible)
AL
AL
AK
AZ
AR
CA
CO
CT
DE
DC
FL
GA
HI
ID
IL
IN
IA
KS
KY
LA
ME
MD
MA
MI
MN
MS
MO
MT
NE
NV
NH
NJ
NM
NY
NC
ND
OH
OK
OR
PA
RI
SC
SD
TN
TX
UT
VT
VA
WA
WV
WI
WY

Document authantificition

Can absentee Ballot and proxy be printed on one sheet of paper for non-profit organisation for electing new board members and some kind of verification of identity of signature is required. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.15.105.77 (talk) 15:51, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

History of Absentee ballot

There seems to be nothing about the history of absentee voting and ballots. When did someone start allowing someone to vote who wasn't at the polls? -- SEWilco (talk) 20:41, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Good point. I put US origins in the Civil War at Postal_voting_in_the_United_States#Process. Does anyone know history elsewhere? Numbersinstitute (talk) 00:29, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

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Absentee ballot fraud

An editor has deleted the following. Relating to a US case of "massive absentee ballot fraud." Do people think it belongs in the article? As is? With more discussion?

"In 1994, United States District Judge of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Clarence Charles Newcomer invalidated a Pennsylvania State Senate election of William G. Stinson he found to be overwhelmingly tainted by election fraud, and declared Bruce Marks the winner, after finding that "substantial evidence was presented establishing massive absentee ballot fraud, deception, intimidation, harassment and forgery.""

2604:2000:E010:1100:7CA2:8485:884B:80AC (talk) 01:26, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

This could be added to the examples at Postal_voting_in_the_United_States#Past_problems, though there are plenty of more recent examples. I think it's too narrow an example for this world-wide article. Numbersinstitute (talk) 00:29, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

References

I think it belongs to the page but would be more appealing to readers if more examples/discussions are added as @2604:2000:E010:1100:7CA2:8485:884B:80AC said, I also think it could be in both articles Postal_voting_in_the_United_States#Past_problems and Absentee ballot . Whether it is presented as a world view or not is no issue. Readers from any part of the world deserve to know about examples of absentee ballot fraud no matter where it may have happened. I think it needs expansion and more examples, it is just too small an information on absentee ballot fraud. KevinW7 (talk) 15:07, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Propose merging Postal voting here

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

After being open to discussion for over 5 months, the result of this discussion was a strong consensus against merging. Jaydavidmartin (talk) 07:42, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

---

I propose merging Postal voting here. They cover many of the same examples in the same countries. The best name for the merged article is probably Absentee ballot, since all voting methods in the articles fit under that term. Some voting methods cannot be called postal voting: In Australia and Poland absentee votes can be cast at a distant polling place. In the Netherlands, Poland and UK absentees can vote by proxy. It's easy to describe all these options in one article called Absentee voting. It would be odd to include them in an article called Postal ballot. The merged article would look like this. Kim9988 (talk) 23:30, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

• Inclined to support. They're not exactly the same everywhere but the content is fairly duplicative and merge is appropriate, provided relevant content and distinguishing info is kept. Reywas92^Talk 23:44, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. As the article explains postal voting is a subset of absentee voting. This distinction is common e.g. https://www.in.gov/sos/elections/2402.htm. Don't see any reason to dumb this down even if people may conflate the two. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 00:07, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

@Reywas92: @Ivar the Boneful: You're right, postal voting is a subset of absentee voting. So this absentee ballot article needs to cover postal voting in each country which has postal voting. We can do that as a first step, so this Absentee ballot article will make clear the different types of absentee voting in each country. At that point we can look at the differences between the articles, and review the benefits of both. Kim9988 (talk) 22:20, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

• Comment in this review they are defined as different things. Just happened to see this discussion as I was working on convenience voting today. Postal voting/vote by mail is "Voters receive a ballot in the mail, approximately two weeks before the election. Ballots can be returned via mail or dropped off at satellite locations or at the county elections office". Elysia (AR) (talk) 18:35, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

That same review says "no-excuse absentee" is also known as "vote by mail" and "absentee voting by mail." All their definitions are in their Table 1. So those authors see a lot of overlap, and this Absentee ballot article is right to include postal ballots as one of its approaches. Kim9988 (talk) 00:06, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose and then some, oh my. I think we have a bit of a muddle around three related concepts: Absentee ballots/voting, Postal voting (vote-by-mail), and Secret Ballots. While Absentee ballots and Postal voting have significant overlap, neither is a subset of the other. Postal voting is a mechanism whereby votes may be cast, whereas Absentee voting applies to particular voters. In the extreme case of universal "absentee" and "mail-in" voting they may amount to the same thing, but in such case referring to the system as "absentee" is essentially non sequitur. The most important distinction is wrt Secrecy of the vote. Any given vote by mail is inherently non-secret, since it is impossible to provide privacy protections to the voter. Absentee voting can ensure privacy if the vote is done with protections. Moreover, if Absentee voting is restricted to those with a specific reason (as in several US states, and various countries), the benefits of vote secrecy are not significantly affected, since only a small percentage of votes are in play, and the bar is raised for any potential selling or coercion. Open vote-by-mail systems, including forms of "no-excuse" Absentee voting, effectively nullify vote secrecy, since anyone can obtain a mail ballot to sell, and any coercer can simply require the victim to obtain one. None of this is currently explained in the Postal voting or Absentee ballot pages, and I have yet to find a suitable citation to remedy this, but will keep looking. (Help here much appreciated!) In the mean time I think merging the pages will only add to the confusion. It may make sense, eventually, to have one page covering all of this, but I'm not sure what it would be called, and neither Absentee or Postal are appropiate, since neither term covers the scope. Rtminner (talk) 03:34, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

User:Kim9988, can you please explain this edit? The edit summary is very disingenuous, you proposing a merge on the talkpage and then ignoring all objections to it does not equate to a consensus. You have also ignored the attribution requirements at WP:Copying within Wikipedia. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 01:08, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Ivar the Boneful:, I agree there was not consensus to merge. I thought there was consensus to include postal voting in the absentee article, since you said, "postal voting is a subset of absentee voting", and User:Elysia (AR)'s source defines them as largely synonymous. I brought up this idea above on Aug 3. Since postal voting is a subset of absentee voting, how would we structure this absentee voting article to exclude it? The previous version included postal, proxy, online and remote-location voting for some countries. It seemed reasonable to make it more complete by adding other countries where we had info, while keeping the postal voting article. In some countries the distinction is hard to make, such as the US where people can get and return absentee ballots in person or sometimes online, but still refer to them as vote by mail, though they are not. Is there a reason to exclude postal voting here? Would you want to remove the coverage of postal voting which was already in the article for many countries? I did give credit in the edit summary, as suggested by WP:PATT Kim9988 (talk) 18:54, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose Mail-in is subset of absentee. This article includes examples that are not mail-in. Also per review article mentioned by Elysia (AR). --David Tornheim (talk) 07:58, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

More info: Michelle Ye Hee Lee (August 18, 2020), "What's the difference between absentee and mail-in voting?", Washingtonpost.com, The two terms are often used interchangeably -- M2545 (talk) 15:24, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose Absentee and mail-in are distinct because of voter initiation vs non-voter initiation. The reference above to the Washington Post is basically not helpful, they do a disservice by trying to mix the two until you get practically to the end of the article, where it says this: "regardless of whether they request it."(request the ballot) Dictionary.com does a much better educational job of separating the difference between manually requested absentee ballots and automatically canvassed mail-in ballots.[4]
  • Absentee: To get an absentee ballot, a registered voter must request one
  • Mail-in: Registered voters in these states automatically receive a mail ballot

The whole thing can be boiled down to two very simple words. Manual and automatic. Progressingamerica (talk) 02:25, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Relevant split discussion

Talk:Postal voting in the United States#Split 2020 election section to new article. --David Tornheim (talk) 22:22, 9 October 2020 (UTC)