"It was sort of presented during the pandemic as a new concept for a lot of folks who may have never encountered it before," says Carrie Villar, director of curatorial affairs at the Washington, D.C., museum, highlighting the misconceptions that arose regarding mail-in voting during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"That was the big moment that voting by mail stepped up to a national stage," Villar says, pointing to the Civil War election of 1864 as a pivotal point in the history of mail-in voting in the United States.
Villar hopes the exhibition can be expanded one day with more artifacts to fill in gaps in its presentation of mail-in voting's extensive history, acknowledging that there are significant elements of this narrative, such as claims of absentee ballot fraud, that are not represented.
The exhibition notes that the pandemic brought attention to concerns over election integrity that have existed since the beginning of voting at polling places and by mail, indicating the persistent issues surrounding trust in the electoral process.
#voting-by-mail #smithsonian-national-postal-museum #election-history #absentee-ballots #election-integrity
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