President Donald Trump proposed prohibiting absentee ballots, mail ballots, early in-person voting, and voting machines, requiring Election Day voting with only paper ballots. He claimed such changes would reduce voter fraud and make elections more honest. Historical experience links paper ballots to ballot-box stuffing and repeat voting by party operatives in precincts. Modern voting machines cannot be easily stuffed and voter registration processes are now professionalized. Multiple studies find very little voter fraud overall and virtually none tied to machines: under 500 claims in six swing states in 2020 out of about 25 million votes, 31 instances from 2000–2014 over more than one billion ballots, and four cases of voter impersonation in 2016.
Last week, President Donald Trump announced that he wanted to fundamentally change the way Americans vote. He wants to prohibit absentee ballots, mail ballots, early in-person voting, and the use of voting machines. He wants all voting to take place on Election Day and all ballots to be paper ballots. He claims that such changes will make elections more honest by preventing voter fraud. This is an extraordinarily dubious claim.
Indeed, moving to paper ballots is likely to increase voter fraud. The classic American phrase "Stuffing the ballot box" comes from the age of paper ballots, when voters put a ballot into a box. It was often simple and easy to put in a second or third ballot into the box, thus "stuffing" it. This phrase dovetails with the other classic American election phrase "Vote early and often."
The days of such shenanigans are long gone, in part because modern voting machines-what Trump wants to get rid of-can't be "stuffed" and in part because voter registration is much more professionalized. Every study shows the same thing: There is very little voter fraud in the nation, and there is none tied to machines. A study of voting in six swing states in 2020 found under 500 claims of fraud out of some 25 million votes cast.
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